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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26009563">yours in black lace</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi'>okapi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - 1930s, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Noir, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Case Fic, Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Desk Sex, Detective Noir, Detectives, Eventual Smut, First Time, Letters, M/M, Oral Sex, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Private Investigators, Sleep Sex, Wall Sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:42:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,525</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26009563</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hardboiled, hell-fried private investigator Anthony J. Crowley is just trying to survive a hot, boring August, but a new case and a series of anonymous naughty letters signed only 'yours in black lace' are about to make things interesting.</p><p>Chapters 1-3 are case fic. Chapter 4 is smut. </p><p>For the 2020 DW Unconventional Courtship challenge based on a summary of the Mills &amp; Boon novel <i>Yours in Black Lace</i> by Mia Zachary.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>81</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Good Omens Human AUs, Season of Kink, Top Crowley Library, Unconventional Courtship</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The client</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>PI Anthony J. Crowley gets a new client on a hot day in August.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Tremendous thanks to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Small_Hobbit/pseuds/Small_Hobbit">Small Hobbit</a> for the beta. Also written for my DW Season of Kink square I-5: Wall or desk sex.</p><p>The full summary of the Mills &amp; Boon work <i>Yours in Black Lace</i> by Mia Zachary is <a href="https://stonepicnicking-okapi.dreamwidth.org/113803.html">on my DW</a>.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was Thursday. It was August.</p><p>The tinny voice on the wireless kept using words like ‘infernal’ and ‘hellish.’ After the hundredth reference to frying an egg on the pavement, I snapped my fingers and made a noise of annoyance into the sultry silence.</p><p>Hell did not serve fried eggs! On the pavement or anywhere else!</p><p>I made another, different noise of annoyance—in truth, I had a few thousand years’ repertoire of ‘em—and rolled up and out of a swivel chair. In two strides, I reached the window. I looked out.</p><p>It was a ghost town.</p><p>Most of the city’s inhabitants had legged it weeks ago. They’d gone to the countryside or to the seaside. They’d gone to loosen their shirt collars and let down their back hair and dip their gouty big toes in the briny soup. In caravans and pairs and solo, they’d packed up and flown the concrete coop, taking their troubles with them, which was just too bad because trouble was my business.</p><p>My only business.</p><p>And, so, there I was, in my office, a spectre without a feast, on a hot summer’s day. I was doing nothing. No, not nothing. I was catching up on my foot dangling and expressing inarticulate irritation at banal, disembodied pronouncements about the rising, and hovering, mercury.</p><p>So, almost nothing.</p><p>I coiled back into my chair and was surprised to see I had a visitor.</p><p>On the desk. Looking directly at me.</p><p>It was bug. And not just any bug.</p><p>Triangle head, bulging eyes, stick body, folded arms. </p><p>It was a <em>praying</em> bug.</p><p>On my desk!</p><p>I judged him to be one of the newly converted, those are the only ones who had the gall.</p><p>“Where’d you come from?” I asked, my tone like sandpaper. I scowled and added, even more harshly, “And what in the blazes are you doing here?”</p><p>The bug invoked his right to silence.</p><p>I had to hand it to him, all in all, it was smart choice. I’d have a lot less business, and the world would have a lot less trouble, if folks would just ‘be like dad and keep mum.’</p><p>My plan to challenge the bug to a staring contest was thwarted by a soft knock at the door. I made a noncommittal noise in case it was vampires. You don’t want to extend too many invitations in a ghost town.</p><p>The door cracked, and there appeared the smiling face I should’ve summoned to deal with my contemplative entomological interloper. Like a reverse Cheshire cat, after the smiling face, there was a body, then the body leant against the door, closing it softly.</p><p>“Crowley, there’s a lady here to see you. Her name’s Amberley.”</p><p>“A client?”</p><p>“I suppose so. You’ll want to see her anyway. She’s a knockout!”</p><p>I fished a pair of dark glasses from the bottom drawer of the desk. The drawer was a well-oiled, well-polished, smooth-sliding oak tomb in which also quartered my medicinal stock of rye and a Colt .30, the kind they issue bastards with a faux white hat and a tin star. I didn’t use the gun much. Contrary to detective stories, a gat in the hand didn’t mean the world by the tail, but once in a blue moon, it lent weight to an immoral argument.</p><p>I donned the glasses and smiled and did my best Bogart.</p><p>“Well, shoo her in, angel, shoo her in.”</p>
<hr/><p>Now before I go any further in this tale, I must state, for the record, that the angel in question was known to most of the world as Mister A. Z. Fell, Bookseller, but he was known to me, who had been pally with him for what seemed like millennia, as Aziraphale.</p><p>Aziraphale was built like an ice cream sundae and just as sweet, all round scoops of butter pecan and vanilla in cool, cream-coloured linen and crisp white cotton. He wore a tartan bowtie with one stripe of cherry red and sported a halo of softly whipped platinum blond hair.</p><p>To be perfectly frank, I’d been wanting to dip my long-handled spoon into Aziraphale’s just-lovely desserts since Adam and Eve shared a Red Delicious, but a good boy like him needed a bad boy like me like a fish needs a velocipede, so I settled for pining like Heathcliff behind smoke-tinted lenses and  employing him as my part-time secretary.</p><p>Aziraphale owned the bookshop on the ground floor. He specialised in Oscar Wilde first editions, infamous Bibles, and not selling a single book to anyone, ever. Whenever he bored of dreaming up new ways of deterring purchase or tired of giving his musty inventory kid-glove caresses, he would come upstairs and sort the post, do a bit of typing and filing, and douse the office aspidistra in holy water. Don’t get the wrong idea; the traffic wasn’t one-way. Sometimes, I slithered down to the bookshop and watched him eat.</p><p>Aziraphale also took it upon himself to serve as a one-headed Cerberus for the clientele. As soon as he heard the off-key jingle of the door to the street and the subsequent whine of the lift hitting the first floor, he would shimmy up the back stairs just in time to perch in the antechamber to my office, looking as shiny and as lucky as a new penny.</p>
<hr/><p>Aziraphale opened the door. “Come in, Mrs. Amberley.”</p><p>“Thank you very much.”</p><p>I stood. “Good day, Mrs. Amberley. Anthony J. Crowley, inquiry agent, at your service. This is Mister A. Z. Fell, my colleague.”  </p><p>Now Aziraphale was constitutionally averse to prevarication, and, thus, Mrs. Amberley was, by all Latin and vulgate definitions, a knockout. Tall, with the swaying elegance of a Monterrey cypress. Big eyes. Long, dark lashes. Dark hair smoothed into nice waves. Good cheekbones. Full mouth, the kind that a certain family of literature called ‘made for kissing.’  </p><p>All this loveliness was tucked rather primly into a pale pink blouse. She wore a matching hat with fishnet veil. The pince-nez slung on a gold chain round her neck was trying to say ‘spinster librarian’ but the curvy black skirt and the, yes, my eyes weren’t playing tricks, genuine snakeskin handbag, were saying something else, and much louder.</p><p>I was listening.</p><p>Aziraphale was talking.</p><p>“Would you like tea, Mrs. Amberley? Darjeeling? Earl Grey? Lapsang souchong?”</p><p>From behind my dark spectacles, I glared at him.  It takes a certain kind of creature to offer a warm-blooded human a hot cup of dragon piss on an egg-frying day, and A. Z. Fell, Bookseller, was that kind of creature, Devil don’t take him.</p><p>But, as I was very soon to learn, it took another, complementary, kind of creature to accept such an offer. The lady replied with a comely smile, flashing a top row of round, white teeth which sat shoulder-to-shoulder like alabaster gravestones waiting for the final carvings,</p><p>“Earl Grey would be very nice, thank you.”</p><p>The heat, I noted, hadn’t left a single mark on Mrs. Amberley. All the flora beyond the office window were wilted, if not incinerated, but not her. Perhaps, I mused, she was an orchid or a desert rose, a flower who, by its nature, thrived in climates inhospitable to the dewy English violet.</p><p>But enough tiptoeing through tulips. Back to business.</p><p>I gestured at the chair on the other side of the desk.</p><p>“Please have a seat, Mrs. Amberley. Uh, Mister Fell?”</p><p>Aziraphale stopped at the door.</p><p>I gestured to the bug, which was still praying on the desk and on my mind. “Could you show the padre out?”</p><p>Aziraphale beamed munificently and approached the desk, extending an arm in a manner which suggested he was auditioning for a West End musical about the life of Saint Francis of Assisi and had every hope of beating Larry Olivier out for the part. He floated by a second time, wearing his grace and his graceful insect on his sleeve, and, thankfully, exited, stage left.</p><p>Mrs. Amberley was momentarily rendered speechless by the spectacle. I empathised. Aziraphale had that effect on me, too, at times.</p><p>“Please, do have a seat,” I insisted.</p><p>That seemed to shake her out of her daze.</p><p>She smiled.  She sat.</p><p>I hadn’t noticed it before, but as I took my place on the other side of the desk, I observed that Mrs. Amberley’s skirt was a wrap-around affair and that sitting caused a wide, short upside-down V to appear to the far side of her left knee. </p><p>I made a note of it and moved on.</p><p>“How did you come to hear of me, Mrs. Amberley?”</p><p>This, I’ve found through experience, is an easier first question than ‘What’s your problem?’</p><p>“You once came to the aid of a lady in my neighbourhood, Mrs. Cecil Forrester. She speaks very highly of your skill and your discretion.”  Her voice fell to a husky note at the last word. It was smooth. Like brandy without the soda. Or cognac being warmed in a glass by two cupped hands. I liked that. It was a nice touch.</p><p>“Mrs. Cecil Forrester,” I repeated slowly, as if trying to place the name. It was a sham. The creature who was, at the moment, calling herself Mrs. Cecil Forrester was, in truth, readily known to me. “I believe that I was of some slight service to her. The case, however, as I remember it, was a simple one.”  </p><p>Like most of her ilk, that is, those who specialise in relieving avarice-prone individuals of their fortunes as well as their sanities, Mrs. Cecil Forrester was highly indignant when anyone attempted to cook her goose in a recipe of her own concocting. I’d helped tip the imbalance back in her favour.</p><p>“She did not think so.”  </p><p>“So, you live in Lewisham, do you?</p><p>“Yes. Mrs. Forrester implied that you were not just an inquiry agent, Mister Crowley.”</p><p>“I can ask too many questions if required, but you sound like you need some action to be taken on your behalf.”</p><p>“Yes, to be blunt, I need some letters and an object returned from a party who doesn’t not wish to relinquish them. There is some urgency in the matter.”</p><p>“There always is.”</p><p>She blushed.</p><p>I continued. “Let’s start with the letters. From whom, to whom?”</p><p>“From me to Doctor Ray Ernst.”</p><p>I nodded. “How many?”</p><p>“Three.”</p><p>“And the object?”</p><p>“Do you know anything about chess, Mister Crowley?”</p><p>“I know about being a pawn in someone’s else ineffable game.”</p><p>Those dark eyes, which I noticed were the rich brown of melted chocolate, held mine. Or mine held hers. Regardless, she blinked first. </p><p>“My husband is retired. His one hobby is chess. The object is a piece from his antique chess set. The set is very dear and very dear to him.”</p><p>“Doctor Ernst has the piece as well as the letters?”</p><p>“Yes. He took it!” Her voice rose to bitter shrillness, then she seemed to catch herself, and when she spoke again, her tone was again soft and conversational. “He and my husband play chess every Saturday night. Last Saturday, Ray, that is, Doctor Ernst left his cigarette case behind. He returned the following day to retrieve it. My husband and I were out. For safekeeping, my husband had locked the cigarette case in the cabinet which also holds his chess set. Our maid Susan allowed Doctor Ernst to go into the study alone with the key. That’s when he stole the piece.”</p><p>“Why did he steal it?”</p><p>“He wants me to run away with him! He says he will show my husband the letters and the piece if I don’t agree! He will tell Josiah that I gave him the piece!” She made a noise. “It’s absurd! It’s wicked!”</p><p>“And you don’t want to run away with him?”</p><p>“No,” she bit her luscious bottom lip very prettily, “Last week, I told Ray that I thought that Josiah was beginning to suspect something and that he and I should not see each other privately anymore.”</p><p>“This happened before Saturday?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“And when is the doctor threating to tell your husband?”</p><p>“This Saturday.”</p><p>“Four days. The doctor could still make some nasty accusations, without the piece or the letters.”</p><p>“But he won’t have any proof. It will be his word against mine.” She fumbled with her handbag and produced a dainty handkerchief. “Oh, Mister Crowley, I don’t know what Josiah will do if Ray goes through with his threat. He’s a jealous man. He,” she sniffed, “will probably kill me.”</p><p>Probably, I thought. “Don’t worry,” I said.</p><p>“Mrs. Forrester said you were kind, Mister Crowley, that you weren’t the type to judge weakness too harshly.”</p><p>Her bottom lip quivered. Her brown eyes shone.</p><p>“I leave the judgement up to others. They enjoy it more. So, I’ll need Doctor Ernst’s full name and address.” I pulled a notebook and pen out of a top drawer and pushed them across the desk. “And, by the way, which chess piece is it?”</p><p>“The black knight.”</p><p>Son of a bitch.</p><p>The world stopped for a moment, and then several things occurred at once.</p><p>I leaned forward.</p><p>The door opened.</p><p>Aziraphale appeared.</p><p>Mrs. Amberley crossed her legs.</p><p>I leaned forward and put my elbows on the desk. The door opened, and Aziraphale appeared carrying the tea tray.  Mrs. Amberley shifted in her chair and crossed her legs.</p><p>And the upside-down V of Mrs. Amberley’s skirt widened and deepened to reveal a nice triangle of silk stocking. Up, up, up the gap gaped until a horizontal swathe of black lace and a vertical line of black satin ribbon suspender were visible.</p><p>Black silk, black lace, black satin.</p><p>Nice thigh. Very nice thigh.</p><p>I was charmed. I was staring, too.</p><p>Mrs. Amberley blushed and shifted and tugged at her skirt and the V was no more. </p><p>Aziraphale set the tea tray down on the desk with a disapproving thud and said testily,</p><p>“I’ll be mother.”</p><p>I looked at Aziraphale. He looked at me.</p><p>Then he poured tea for one and fussed about with lemon and sugar. He and Mrs. Amberley exchanged pleasantries. Probably about lemon and sugar. Or tea. I wasn’t listening.</p><p>I leaned back in my chair until both of Mrs. Amberley’s legs were hidden from my view by the edge of the desk. I kept silent and kept my gaze on the pen and notebook until the door closed and I was alone and palely loitering with my client once more.</p><p>“I’ll do everything I can to recover your letters and the black knight back before Saturday, Mrs. Amberley.”</p><p>“Oh, thank you, Mister Crowley. Your fee is…”</p><p>“Twenty-five a day plus expenses.”</p><p>“Oh,” she looked surprised, “I haven’t any money of my own, but Mrs. Forrester said she would—”</p><p>“We’ll talk about the fee when I’ve done the job. Now, please, write down the relevant addresses and telephone numbers. Doctor Ernst’s surgery, his home, any place he frequents, public house, places of worship, clubs. Write your own address as well.”</p><p>“Yes, of course.”</p><p>I watched her drink tea and write. She had a beautiful hand for both. She didn’t touch the pince-nez, not once, even when she had to dig in her handbag for a little book and copy an address onto the page.</p><p>“Doctor Ernst isn’t, by any chance, an eye specialist?”</p><p>She looked up. Her face was a mask of surprise. I compared it to the earlier one and decided that this was the real McCoy. She wasn’t really surprised by my daily rate, but she was surprised by my question.</p><p>“How did you know?”</p><p>“Lucky guess.”</p><p>One corner of her mouth rose, and she dropped the veil without ever having lifted it.</p><p>Damn.</p><p>Damn, damn, damn.</p><p>“Are you a bad man, Mister Crowley?” Her voice was mostly breath.</p><p>“Bad enough,” I answered, making my voice as low as hers. “My only redeeming quality is the twenty-third psalm tattooed on my chest.”</p><p>She smiled her real smile. It was hot enough to fry an egg.</p><p>I didn’t hear Aziraphale enter. I was watching her mouth as she said,</p><p>“Thank you so much, Mister Crowley. My soul is yours if you can save me from this.”</p><p>It seemed as if she was momentarily toying with the idea of challenging me to staring contest, when wisdom prevailed, and she returned to her scribing. I reintroduced the business touch.</p><p>“Don’t worry, Mrs. Amberley. I can’t foresee the job requiring more than one day. Is there any safe way you can return to London on Thursday or Friday?”</p><p>“I told Josiah I was coming to London to have a bracelet mended.” From her handbag, she drew a chain of silver links and an oval pink stone.</p><p>“Oh, Incan Rose,” exclaimed Aziraphale as he put the tray on the desk. “I love Incan Rose! I can help you with that.”</p><p>“Thank you, Mister Fell,” she said in that brandy voice and handed it over.  </p><p>“When Mister Fell calls to say the bracelet is ready, you’ll know the job is finished and you can return and collect the recovered items.”</p><p>“And the bracelet,” added Aziraphale. He slipped it into his jacket pocket and went about collecting the tea things.</p><p>I said farewell to my lovely at the desk. Aziraphale showed her out. He knocked and reentered just as I’d settled into a swiveling brood in my chair.</p><p>He perched on the edge of the desk. “So?”</p><p>“Would you mind learning a bit about antique chess sets?”</p><p>Aziraphale lit at the prospect of new research into old topics. He hummed cheerily in the affirmative. “Is it important?”</p><p>“Might be. Mrs. Amberley’s black knight has been taken ransom by the lover she’s just jilted.”</p><p>His eyebrows rose, and his expression was sweet. “Dear, dear, black knight in jeopardy, you’re just the one ride to the rescue, aren’t you? Is that all? Just a chess piece?”</p><p>“Some letters, too.”</p><p>Aziraphale groaned and rolled his eyes. “Oh, letters,” he said with mild disgust.</p><p>“I know. I don’t understand why the humans write them, why they keep them when they know it leaves them horribly vulnerable to all sorts of trouble.”</p><p>Aziraphale sighed. “I suppose sometimes the sentiments are so strong that they are compelled to put pen to paper.”</p><p>“To capture the sentiments?”</p><p>“Or release them. Control them.”</p><p>I made a noise of dismissive annoyance. “Perhaps. The written word has always been more of your division.”</p><p>I studied Aziraphale’s profile and a bit of the old familiar ache surfaced, so I thought about Mrs. Amberley’s profile.</p><p>“You like her,” I said because I had to say something.</p><p>“So do you,” he replied and gave me a thoughtful glance. “Who’s the jilted lover?”</p><p>“Doctor Ray Ernst, eye specialist.” I reached for the notebook. So did Aziraphale. And, just then, Friar Bug-eyes reappeared, processing down Aziraphale’s arm and onto the page.</p><p>“Who’s that fellow?” I growled.</p><p>“I don’t know. He found his way into the shop.” Aziraphale smiled sweetly. “I suppose he’s on sabbatical. Or maybe he’s just trying to find a cool place to sit, and London’s all out of bodhi trees.”</p><p>“Take him back down to the shop. I don’t do charity, and I don’t have even a tiny gnat for his begging bowl if I did. Let him earn indulgences on your postage stamp.”</p><p>Aziraphale smirked and shot me one of my favourite variety of ‘Oh, Crowley’ looks.</p><p>“Indulgences.”</p><p>I tried to chuckle. I can’t. I couldn’t. It came out a strange, belching wheeze, which was apropos, since indulgences were one of the strangest wheezes I’ve ever devised.</p><p>“One of my best, you have to admit, angel.”</p><p>Aziraphale rolled his eyes. Then he turned his head and observed, “She has lovely penmanship.” </p><p>“So do you.”</p><p>“And legs.”</p><p>“So do you.”</p><p>Aziraphale huffed and hopped off the desk, and the cavity where my heart would’ve been gave a disappointed throb. Just the once. “So, what’s your plan, shamus?” he asked.</p><p>Shamus. That is, private investigator. I secretly loved it when Aziraphale used, and misused, slang from American pulps, but I wasn’t about to let him know it. I made a noise of annoyance to hide my delight.</p><p>“I’m going to Lewisham. Now.”</p><p>“In the Bentley?”</p><p>I snorted. “I’m conspicuous enough. No. Just,” I snapped my fingers, “I’m going to get the lay of the land and make a plan for tomorrow.”</p><p>“Do you want company?”</p><p>“Not today, but, tomorrow, yes.”</p><p>“When I shall have my head examined by Doctor Ray Ernst of Lewisham?”</p><p>“Just your eyes, angel. He flops above the surgery. I need him occupied while I search his rooms.”</p><p>Aziraphale nodded and held out his hand to the bug, who crawled aboard.</p><p>“She’s trouble, Crowley. Mrs. Amberley is trouble.”</p><p>“Oh, I know. You know the definition of ‘frail,’ angel?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “‘Liable to betray, as a woman who has made up her mind to sin.’”</p><p>“What dictionary says that?” he asked hotly.</p><p>I grinned. “The Devil’s, of course.”</p>
<hr/><p>No shading clouds had crossed the sky and no cooling rain had fallen by the following evening when I slowed the Bentley to a crawl on as mean a street as Lewisham afforded.</p><p>With the stealth that a Russian cultural attaché only dreams of, Aziraphale slipped into the passenger’s seat.</p><p>“Got chummy, did you?”</p><p>“Yes, I had a pint at the pub!” Aziraphale drummed his fingers on his knees and said ‘pint at the pub’ with the cheery satisfaction someone less singular would use for ‘I had tea with the Queen,’ which, by the way, Aziraphale had also had. In fact, more than one tea and with more than one queen.  But that’s not this story.</p><p>“Though he does appear to be under a great deal of strain, Doctor Ernst didn’t seem like a villain, Crowley.”</p><p>“Don’t let ‘im fool you, angel. When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals. He has nerve, and he has knowledge.”</p><p>“You read that in a book.”</p><p>“I <em>wrote</em> it in a book,” I corrected. “Fourth hand, but still. It’s true. Remember Crippen?”</p><p>“You took credit for him just as you did the Spanish Inquisition.”</p><p>I’d forgotten about that part. I changed the subject.</p><p>“Everything’s jake, angel. I got ‘em. A black knight and three letters. Mrs. Amberley is spared Desdemona’s necklace. For now.”</p><p>I reached a gloved hand into my jacket and pulled out the chess piece. Aziraphale donned his own pair of kid gloves and took it.</p><p>We purred along to the quietest, loneliest nook in Lewisham. I brought the Bentley to a stop and snapped my fingers for an extra bit of privacy. Then I turned on a small, bright torch.</p><p>Aziraphale removed the wire-rimmed spectacles he didn’t need.</p><p>“That’s what you got?”</p><p>“Yes.” He held out the glasses. “You don’t like them?”</p><p>“No, I’m just surprised they aren’t rose-tinted, angel.”</p><p>Aziraphale chuckled. “Crowley.”</p><p>I smiled. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist. So, what do you think of this black knight?”</p><p>Aziraphale raised the chessman and examined it in the light.</p><p>After a long minute, he declared. “Staunton. 1849. Ebony.”</p><p>“You’ve been doing your homework.”</p><p>Aziraphale smiled and gave the piece back to me. I returned it to my jacket pocket.</p><p>“Where did you find them?”</p><p>“Secret drawer inside a secret drawer.”</p><p>“I love secret drawers! Secret passages. Secret codes. So much fun. And how did you find the secret drawer?”</p><p>“Dimensions of the drawers, dimensions of the wardrobe. Bit of maths. There was a tiny wormhole, and I stuck your hairpin in it.”</p><p>“I knew that would come in handy!” said Aziraphale proudly. He chuckled. I envied that he could do it without sounding like Ishmael’s consumptive cousin. “You’re clever, Crowley.”</p><p>“I’m a sneaky snake, that’s for sure,” I said. “And so is Mrs. Amberley.” I withdrew the letters from my jacket pocket and opened the first envelope. “Now let’s see just how naughty our gal can get.”</p><p>Aziraphale made a noise of outrage. “You’re not going to read her personal correspondence!”</p><p>“Yeah, I am. My code’s my own. Avert your gaze and clutch your rope pearls if you must.” I skimmed the first one and nodded. “Piquing interest but tame.” I read the second. “Getting warmer.” Then I came to the third. “Now that’s the stuff to give the troops.”</p><p>All the while, Aziraphale was fogging the windows with huffed indignation and looking at anything but me and wiggling impatiently in his seat. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw him go still and turn his head and look just a little bit interested.</p><p>I handed him the third letter. He took it with a show of reluctance. I gave the dust jacket summary as he read.</p><p>“What she wants to do to him. What she wants him to do to her. Longing. Craving. Desire. Mingled with some description of her undergarments.”</p><p>“Which we’ve glimpsed,” said Aziraphale coolly without looking up. Then he added, “She calls him her ‘Black Knight.’”</p><p>“Pet names, angel. It’s a sign of intimacy among humans.”</p><p>He made a noise and handed the letter back.</p><p>“There’s no postmark on these,” I observed, turning over the envelopes before slipping them back into my pocket.</p><p>“I may have an explanation for that. The Amberley’s maid came to Doctor Ernst’s surgery while I was there. Maybe she passes the letters.”</p><p>“It’s possible, but that’d be a hell of a risk for Mrs. Amberley, putting herself in the maid’s power. Maybe the lady just gives them to the doctor directly when she has her pince-nez adjusted.”</p><p>“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”</p><p>I snorted. I’d taught Aziraphale the joke, and age did not wither nor custom stale its infinite amusement.</p><p>Then I frowned. “But that’s not right, either. You don’t give someone a letter when you’re engaged, or about to be engaged, or have just finished being engaged, in your romping.”</p><p>“Don’t you?”</p><p>“Nah. You give it to them when you want to and can’t.”</p><p>“Ah.”</p><p>“Ah, well. Mystery for the ages, I suppose.” I started the car. “Ring Mrs. Amberley up in the morning, angel.”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>“Shall I drop you at the bookshop?”</p><p>“Yes, I need to work on Mrs. Amberley’s bracelet.”</p><p>“Mending chains,” I mused abstractedly as I turned onto the main road.</p>
<hr/><p>Mrs. Amberley threw her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek. She threw her arms around Aziraphale and kissed him on the cheek. She might have thrown her arms around Monsignor Mantis and kissed him on the cheek, too, but he was too absorbed in giving my desk a benediction to pay her jubilation any mind.</p><p>I took Mrs. Amberley aside just as Aziraphale left to fetch the repaired bracelet, which was downstairs in the bookshop. I asked her a very personal question about her undergarments. She blushed and tried to look shocked, but by the time Aziraphale had returned, she’d given me the answer I wanted and was giggling and batting her eyelashes like a professional minx.</p><p>“Here you go,” said Aziraphale after clearing his throat, which had the effect of throwing a cold pail of water on our tête-à-tête.</p><p>“Oh, thank you again, Mister Fell. You’re too kind.”</p><p>“My pleasure, my dear. It’s a lovely piece.”</p><p>“You should burn those,” I advised, nodding at the letters.</p><p>“I will,” Mrs. Amberley promised, her eyes shining. “As soon as I’m able.”</p><p>“No gift like the present,” I said and found a large, heavy ashtray in my desk. It was the kind of hefty saucer that when hoisted in anger would probably end up with blood and grey matter on it. “Go for it.”</p><p>She put the letters in the tray. I snapped my fingers. She caught her beautiful breath as the flame sprung to life.</p><p>Aziraphale huffed and muttered something that might have been ‘show off.’ The bug suddenly realised he was late for chapel and scurried away.</p><p>“It’s a trick ashtray,” I explained. “I picked it up from Houdini after he took his last sucker punch.”</p><p> “Oh, Mister Crowley,” Mrs. Amberley sighed as if I were cognac in her hands. Then she put my hand in hers and squeezed.</p>
<hr/><p>That might’ve been the end of all things Amberley but two days later, I returned to the office to find two identical envelopes had come in the post.</p><p>Both were addressed to me in a lovely, candy floss hand. Both were postmarked Lewisham.</p><p>I put the back of my lap in my chair, found a flick knife, and slit the first envelope.</p><p>It contained a cheque drawn on the account of one Mrs. Cecil Forrester.</p><p>The second contained a note.</p><p>No salutation.</p><p>
  <em>This is reckless. This is rash. It must be the terrible, unrelenting heat which causes such madness. I have a terrible unrelenting heat inside me. Nothing quenches it. Nothing cools it. Nothing sobers it. I am thinking of you. I am thinking of your oak desk. I am thinking of being trapped between you and the desk. Of your body grinding against mine. I am thinking of heat, your heat, inside me. I think of it secretly, shamefully, but often. So very often. Sometimes I forget to breathe. I am thinking of how I could be in body what I am in mind, which is… </em>
</p><p>
  <em>…yours in black lace.</em>
</p><p>I folded the note and put it back in the envelope. I pulled out the bottom drawer and slid the envelope under the Colt. I took out the bottle of rye and a glass and poured myself two fingers’ worth. Then I got out the ashtray and put the envelope with the cheque on it. I leaned back in my chair and hoisted my feet onto the edge of the desk, crossing them at the ankles.</p><p>I took a sip, letting the burn of whiskey march to where my guts would be if I had any.</p><p>I snapped my fingers. I watched the flame.</p><p>“Crowley?”</p><p>I hadn’t heard him knock or come in.</p><p>I didn’t look at him. I looked at the fire in the ashtray and the burning envelope.</p><p>“Angel, mark the Amberley account ‘paid.’” And then some.</p><p>“All right, Crowley.”</p><p>I heard him as if one of us was at the bottom of an empty bottle. It was probably me.</p><p>“And mark the case ‘closed.’”</p><p>“Okay, Crowley.”</p><p>I poured myself another finger and raised the glass. “Here’s moths in your ermine!” I cried and downed the draught in one.</p><p>And in that one, I both knew and didn’t know that I had lied to Aziraphale.</p><p>The Amberley business wasn’t over.</p><p>Not yet. Not by half.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Crowley is quoting <i>The Devil's Dictionary</i> by Ambrose Bierce [1906].</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The husband</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Crowley gets another naughty letter and another client named Amberley.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was still hot. It was still August. It was still Thursday.</p><p>I was beginning to think it might always be hot and August and Thursday.</p><p>Someone named Amberley was sitting across the desk from me, telling me in what high regard I was held by Mrs. Cecil Forrester of Lewisham.</p><p>Josiah Amberley was in his mid-sixties. His face was deeply lined. He was dressed in a grey suit which would have been a nice grey suit if it had been recently cleaned, pressed, and mended. It wasn’t. His hair was grey and grizzled, but it had been combed and pomaded into respectability, perhaps, for the occasion of calling upon a private investigator. He was sweating and giving off the faint odor of desperation.</p><p>Josiah Amberley looked broken, I decided, because his glasses were broken. The glasses had been repaired by a crude, stupid hand, and they gave him a lopsided, pathetic look.</p><p>He held his hat in his hands and turned it slowly as he told his tale.</p><p>He’d been junior partner of Brickfall and Amberley, manufacturers of artistic materials. I recognised the names from the sides of paint boxes. He’d retired three years ago and a year later had married a woman more than twenty years younger than himself.</p><p>And now his wife was gone.</p><p>And so was all the cash in his safe.</p><p>And his chess set.</p><p>He wanted me to find all three, in reverse order, starting with the chess set.</p><p>“You’re certain Mrs. Amberley decamped with,” I pretended to look at my notes, “Doctor Raymond Ernst?”</p><p>“Yes. He’s gone, too, and left no word with his family. I’ve played chess every Saturday evening with him for over a year. He’s always admired my set.”</p><p>And your wife, I didn’t add.</p><p>“Oh, the ingratitude! Was ever a woman so pampered? And that young man! He might have been my own son!” Might have been but wasn’t, I hoped, otherwise this was going to take a sharp turn from Victorian melodrama into Greek tragedy real quick. The dumb bug wouldn’t do. I’d have to hire a chorus.</p><p>“Oh, it’s a dreadful, dreadful world, Mister Crowley!” Mister Amberley moaned, seeming to audition for the part.</p><p>I couldn’t disagree with the statement, so I clucked like a nightingale with hiccups.</p><p>“My own efforts to locate the chess set have failed, and the police,” Josiah Amberley said bitterly, “are not in the business of recovering stolen property.”</p><p>I did not ask if he considered his wife among his stolen property, but I did think it funny how it always took a bit of very personal misery for some humans to realise just what the police were and weren’t for.</p><p>Josiah Amberley gave a description which matched the woman who’d been sitting in that very chair two weeks earlier, but he had no photograph to share. When she’d lammed, she’d taken them all with her.</p><p> That was interesting. Really, as far as I was concerned, it was the only interesting thing Josiah Amberley had to say.</p><p>“You have my complete attention, Mister Amberley,” I lied. “Shall I return to Lewisham with you and get a feel for the starting point of the hunt?”</p><p>He agreed readily enough, and we moved onto money matters.</p><p>Josiah Amberley didn’t look pleased about parting with a day’s retainer, but he did it. In truth, it was only an excuse to leave him in my office. Feigning need of a receipt book, I went to consult with Aziraphale.</p><p>“I’m returning with Josiah Amberley to Lewisham by train.”</p><p>My lips were in kissing distance from his, and my voice was low, quick, and conspiratorial. It was a plotting lover’s whisper, and I was going to enjoy it while it lasted.</p><p>“I’m going to ask him to wait in the bookshop while I close the office. Have a really nice chess set and books about chess and whatever else you can think of around. Engage him in conversation. Charm him if you can.  The bottom line is this:  I want him to want to come back to town to play against you. Soon. Maybe as early tomorrow.”</p><p>“Got it,” said Aziraphale. His blue eyes were saucer-round and lit like a cloudless spring sky, and I wanted to drown in them.  I settled for saying “Thanks, angel” and squeezing his upper arm.</p><hr/><p>Like proper Englishmen, Josiah Amberley and I hid ourselves behind afternoon newspapers as soon as the train rolled out of the station. The retired colourman might have been reading his, but my thoughts wandered far from today’s news.</p><p>Josiah Amberley said his wife and Ray Ernst had disappeared the previous Friday night. That Friday night, Aziraphale and I had, for reasons I couldn’t remember, gotten blotto in the bookshop and entered into a heated, booze-fueled debate about Keats. Or maybe it was Tennyson. Or dolphins. I liked dolphins. Aziraphale liked whales. I had tootled back to my flat in Mayfair and slept my condition off like a human. Thus, the following day, it was well into the blistering afternoon when I stopped by the office and found a letter tucked among the usual bills and advertisements. The postmark was Lewisham. The writing was flowery and feminine.</p><p>
  <em>I’m still thinking of you, but I’ve decided that a wall would suit my needs much better than the desk. Trap me between it and the hardness of your body. Crush me if you dare. You won’t hurt me. You’ll be making a fantasy real. And if you wanted to feel my heat against your face, I wouldn’t say no. I’d say, yes, yes, yes. I’d beg for it if you wanted. Because even though it’s wrong, I’m still…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>…yours in black lace.  </em>
</p><p>Against a wall. Against a desk.</p><p>Damned distracting.</p><p>Keep your head in the case, Snake Eyes, I told myself, and rustled the newspaper like I cared.</p><hr/><p>It was well past Cinderella’s bedtime when I heard my name.</p><p>“Crowley.”</p><p>“What’s a rotten place like this doing in a sweet thing like you?” I slurred, addressing the gimlet in front of me on the bar. I didn’t need to turn my head to know who was hitching his ample posterior on the stool beside me. I could smell him, and I’d known what he smelled like since we both stood on a wall and inhaled our first, the world’s first, petrichor.</p><p>I was hunkered down in one of my favourite watering holes, a dive that had once been called Florian’s. It wasn’t very big, and it wasn’t very friendly. It wasn’t very clean, either, but darkness hides a multitude of sins, including those against basic hygiene and sanitation. There were a few round tables, a bar along the right wall, and a small stage at the back. It was reasonably full of patrons for a Thursday night. To the accompaniment of a scratchy record, a torcher in a platinum wig belted out the last of her ‘he done me wrong,’ song, accepted a smattering of weak applause, and sauntered vaguely towards the other end of the bar.</p><p>“You’ve been to Lewisham,” said Aziraphale. It was a habit of his. Whenever he found me drinking alone, he always broke the ice by stating the obvious.</p><p>“Among other places.”</p><p>I turned my head and shot him a look. He gave a minute nod, a moment’s gesture which thrilled me more than the hours I’d spent consuming gin and Rose’s Lime, but then I got a good look at him and a noise of annoyance crawled out of my throat like a sick man trying to get out of bed.</p><p>Aziraphale was far too bright, far too cheerful, and far too good for a place like used-to-be Florian’s. In truth, he looked like a slice of angel food on a tarantula.</p><p>“How did it go?” he asked.    </p><p>“All right.” I sniffed. “The Amberley’s house is called, of all things, The Haven. There are monotonous brick streets and weary suburban highways and in the middle of them, a little island of ancient culture and comfort. The Haven is surrounded by a high sun-baked wall mottled with lichens and topped with moss—what?”</p><p>“I like it when you wax poetic.” He sipped his drink apologetically. “You sound like a travel guide. Or an estate agent.”</p><p>I stared at the glass in front of him and made a grunt of grenadine-laced irritation. “Please tell me that you miracled that Pink Lady into existence.”</p><p>“No, I ordered it.”</p><p>“You would.” I snorted and shook my head. “Well, all the poetry died when I crossed the threshold of The Haven. There was no mistake. I felt it at once.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Evil.”</p><p>An ordinary human would’ve reacted to this, but Aziraphale wasn’t human. He didn’t question or dismiss my assessment. He simply made another of those minute nods and sipped his gin-and-grenadine like the great southern pansy he was, and for that, curse him, gently and with all the words in precisely the wrong order, I loved him.</p><p>Loved him, loved him, loved him.</p><p>“Something happened in that house, angel. It was sneering at me from every nook and cranny.”</p><p>I decided to stop talking for a while and went back to nursing my gimlet. When I got bored of the teat, I picked up my report where I’d left off.</p><p>“The Haven was unkept, to say the least. It was dirty, too. Inside, it bore all the signs of a man who has no idea how to take care of himself living alone. The maid gave notice and walked out the very morning of the day that Mrs. Amberley left. Mrs. Amberley probably tipped her off to the coming storm, but I doubt that lady knew just how dark the clouds were going to get for her. Did you get a good look at her, the maid, when you visited Ernst’s surgery?”</p><p>“Not a very good look. Dark hair, tall, shapely figure.”  </p><p>“So not unlike Mrs. Amberley herself. Her name was Susan. I need to find her.”</p><p>“She wore thick glasses. I overheard her say she was picking up something for Mrs. Amberley. Doctor Ernst was expecting it. He passed her an envelope from under the counter at once.”</p><p>I finished the gimlet and switched to whiskey sours.</p><p>“Mister Amberley took me into his dingy sanctum, which he called a study. We sat across from each other at an empty table I assume he used for chess. He wailed for about an hour about his precious set, his money, and his wife. In between the caterwauling, I teased out that he’d planned to take her to the Haymarket Theatre that Friday night, but she’d complained of a headache at the last minute and didn’t go. Aggrieved, he went alone. When he returned, he found his safe empty, his troves plundered, and his wife gone.”</p><p>“Did she leave a note?”</p><p>I nodded. “He showed it to me. I’m no expert, but it looked like the same handwriting as the notes she wrote when she was in my office.  I touched the paper, and it crackled.”</p><p>“With?”</p><p>“Lust.” I sniffed. “But moving onto avarice, after that, I got the grand tour. Among other rooms, Mister Amberley showed me the strong-room, which held the safe. The room was like a bank. It had one iron door and one iron shutter.  Burglarproof unless your wife has surreptitiously made a duplicate key.”</p><p>“How much did she get away with?”</p><p>“Four thousand pounds.”</p><p>Aziraphale whistled.</p><p>“Oddly enough, there was one trace of care on Mister Amberley’s part for his surroundings. In the strong-room, I could still smell paint.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“For the past week, Mister Amberley has been easing his aching heart by painting the inside of his house, starting with the strong-room and going down the main hall.”</p><p>“Interesting.”</p><p>“I thought so.”</p><p>“You did say he made his money in paint.”</p><p>“I did. Small tubes not big buckets, canvases, not walls, but still. He showed me the garden. The interior of the house had about a week’s worth of grime, but the outside had been running to seed for much longer. Months, maybe years. Wild neglect. A jungle cat could’ve been hiding out there, but for one spot.”</p><p>I paused for effect, took a sip, and turned my head.</p><p>Aziraphale raised a manicured eyebrow.</p><p>“There was a freshly dug grave in the garden.”</p><p>“Oh, Crowley!”</p><p>“A small, freshly dug grave belonging to Mrs. Amberley’s dog.”</p><p>“And just when did it die?”</p><p>“On a Wednesday. The day before Mrs. Amberley darkened my door for the first time.”</p><p>“Crowley.”</p><p>I shook my head slowly without knowing exactly why.</p><p>“Why would Mrs. Amberley go away with Ernst, Crowley? Did she just change her mind about him?”</p><p>“Did she strike you as that type?”</p><p>“No, not exactly, but in that case, where did she go? Has Ernst done something to her and fled? Or has Amberley done something to her? Or both of them? And if it were Amberley, why in heavens would he ask you to investigate? Why would he ask anyone to poke into a crime of his own making? That doesn’t seem very smart unless he likes running the risk of getting caught.”</p><p>I finished my drink before I spoke.</p><p>“I have to play this the way it’s dealt, angel.”</p><p>I glanced over again and caught the tiny nod.</p><p>Then I promised myself I wouldn’t look at Aziraphale anymore that night because if he nodded like that at me again, I just might pour myself into his arms and make an infernal, hellish, hot August fool of myself.</p><p>I tried to think of something that annoyed me. It wasn’t difficult.</p><p>“I saw Barker today.”</p><p>“Really? How is he?”</p><p>“Still wearing that stupid face. Hasn’t mended his stupid ways. I bet he’s one of those who thinks hell is just a frame of mind!”</p><p>“I like him.”</p><p>“What’s to like, angel? He’s a pretentious little shit. He wears grey tinted glasses even when he don’t need ‘em!”</p><p>Aziraphale smirked. “Maybe he’s hiding something, Snake Eyes.” He infused the last two words with enough sass to snap a towel.</p><p>When the lovely tingle of the pet name had passed, I reared back on my proverbial hind legs. “Barker ain’t hiding nothing from me! I caught him snooping around and warned him off good and proper. Damn jumped-up peeper!”</p><p>“He’s supposed to snoop, Crowley. That’s his job. He’s a private investigator, too.”</p><p>“A bad one.”</p><p>“An honest one.”</p><p>“That looney tie pin! He’s a Mason, for Satan’s sake!”</p><p>Aziraphale shrugged. “Even so.”</p><p>I grumbled. “I had a nice, long chinwag with the local post mistress. It seems the Ernst family hired him to find dear Raymond.”</p><p>Aziraphale rolled his eyes and said dryly, “I suppose that makes them the only ones in Lewisham who are immune to Mrs. Cecil Forrester.”</p><p>The torcher stomped back onto the stage. Her first song was a sad, slow version of “Everything Happens to Me.” I smiled. It was one of my favourites, and Aziraphale knew better than to say a word until she was well into her next number.</p><p>Then he leaned close and whispered, “Mister Amberley’s coming to the shop tomorrow evening to play chess.”</p><p>I turned abruptly and gawked. “Angel!”</p><p>He grinned and drummed his fingers on his thighs, a gesture which meant he was very pleased with himself.</p><p>“Well done!” I hailed the barman and barked, “Whatever this clever gentleman wants!”</p><p>“I think I’d like a grasshopper next.”</p><p>“Satan wept but okay!” I cheered and slapped Aziraphale on the back. “You charmed the bastard.”</p><p>“My 1840 Rajasthan set did most of the work. The maharajah of Jaipur’s army against the East India Company. I told him he could be white.”</p><p>I tried not to wheeze.  “Of course, you did. Thank you. That’s immensely helpful.”</p><p>“You’re going back to The Haven tomorrow.”</p><p>“Yes. I’m going to get some answers to questions I have.”</p><p>“But Crowley—”</p><p>A green frothy drink was set on the bar.</p><p>“Drink your cricket, angel.”</p><hr/><p>I’d put away two more whiskey sours when Aziraphale asked,</p><p>“Why don’t you let me walk you home, Crowley?”</p><p>He reached for my shoulder, but I drew away.</p><p>“I don’t need a minder, thank you very much!”</p><p>I cringed. I sounded like a petulant child whining about bedtime, and the thing I wanted most in the world was his touch. That was a fine way to act.</p><p>You’re just a demon, Snake Eyes, I told myself. Fallen leftovers. Fallen, cold leftovers. Not even a warm plate in the oven. Scraps.  </p><p>A heavy silence fell. Then a heavy ethereal sigh.</p><p>“Just as you say. Good night, Crowley.”</p><p>Five minutes of loneliness staggered by, and then I was settling up the tab and sliding off the stool, stumbling down the stairs and tumbling out into the street, and walking myself home.</p><p>It was still hot. It was still August. The city was still a ghost town.</p><p>And as haunted as I felt, I had to be one of the ghosts.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sherlock Holmes fans will recognise the case as "The Retired Colourman."</p><p>Torcher is slang from Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe stories meaning singer.</p><p>Aziraphale's chess set is inspired by <a href="https://chessantiques.com/product/antique-rajasthan-polychrome-chess-set/">this one</a>, which is worth $20,000.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The case closed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The case is resolved. Only one spot of trouble left.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I woke up the next morning and drank one cup of strong coffee and about a petrol tank full of cold water. Then I sauntered by a cute little bakery on the way to the office. Aziraphale accepted the brown bag of hot croissants as the apology it was. I went upstairs and saw I had a letter addressed to me in a hand I now easily recognised as Mrs. Amberley’s.</p><p>A chill ran down where my spine might’ve been.</p><p>I slit the envelope open with a flick knife.</p><p>It was empty, or so I thought at first.</p><p>I held the envelope open wide, turned it over, and shook it.</p><p>Scraps of paper floated to the desk like autumn leaves.</p><p>There were two tickets to the Haymarket Theatre for a Friday night’s performance. Seats number 32 and number 31, B row. There were also two receipts for the left luggage office at Paddington Station.</p><p>Interesting.</p><p>I had work to do.</p>
<hr/><p>The praying mantis was on my desk when I poured myself a fortifying dose of rye later that afternoon. I threw the shot down my throat and slammed the glass on the desk with a long ‘Ah!’ and a definitive thud. The bug didn’t budge. I slumped down a little bit in the chair and studied half of my haunted face, which was all that was reflected in the empty glass.</p><p>Stop stalling, Snake Eyes, I told myself.</p><p>I stood, put on my dark glasses, and holstered the Colt under my arm. That’s when I felt eyes, much larger than bug eyes, on me.</p><p>He was standing in the door, looking lovely and edible and deeply concerned, like I was the <em>Times</em> and he was a strongly worded letter to the editor.</p><p>“I’ll be gone long before Mister Amberley arrives, angel, but I’m not going to risk going inside The Haven until well after dark. Tell him I’m chasing down a lead on a fancy chess set which popped up in Little Purlington.”</p><p>“Why Little Purlington?”</p><p>“Why not?” I put on my jacket. I glanced at the window. “The heat’s never going to let up, is it?”</p><p>“It will. Soon.”</p><p>Talking about the weather when I wanted to say, ‘I love you.’ I made a noise of annoyance at myself which sounded like bucket of mud being dumped on a pair of freshly shined brogues.</p><p>“Be careful, Crowley.”</p><p>Care didn’t enter into for either us. He knew that. But I said what I was supposed to say. What a hard-boiled gumshoe always says when a good girl tells him to be careful.</p><p>“You, too, angel.”</p>
<hr/><p>I didn’t need light to see, and there was no lock that could keep me out. The evil was still palpable when I crossed the threshold of The Haven. I let my fingertips skim along the walls as I moved silently from room to room. I halted in the strong-room.</p><p>Under the smell of paint, I caught a hint of something else.</p><p>Gas.</p><p>Then it hit me.</p><p>This wasn’t a strong-room. It was a death chamber.</p><p>How?</p><p>I looked overhead. I lifted myself up, levitating like Houdini’s wet dream. Under ornamentation, there was a plaster rose in the centre of the ceiling. And there was a pipe. I followed the pipe to the wall and down the wall and out of the chamber and along the skirting all the way to a corner tap. I twisted the tap, just for fun. I returned to the strong-room where I heard, and smelled, the faint hiss of death. I went back to the tap and shut it off. Then I examined the door and the window of the strong-room.</p><p>With both door and window shut, it would be as tight as a tomb. That had been the point, hadn’t it?</p><p>It had taken thought and planning and a whole lot of hate.</p><p>Evil.</p><p>A duet of unheard screams vibrated in my chest.</p><p>I debated with a phantom Josiah Amberley in my mind.</p><p>Why paint it, you bastard? Just to hide the smell of gas? You could’ve painted elsewhere in the house with the same effect, without drawing attention to your little death trap. Why start here? Because you had to. Why did you have to?</p><p>I put my hand out and touched the wall. I closed my eyes and quieted everything inside me but the screams. I was dowsing for misery, and my fingertips were ten spindly rods.</p><p>I was squatting below the shuttered window when I felt it. With a pass of my hand, the topmost layer of paint dissolved as if by a thin and precise smear of turpentine. And there it was, scribbled in, of all things, indelible purple pencil. The first four letters were on a horizontal line; the rest of the message sloped downward toward the floor.</p><p>WE WE—RE MURDERED</p><p>“Crowley?”</p><p>“SATAN’S BLOODY BOLLOCKS!”</p><p>I jumped half a foot in the air and turn sharply round to see Aziraphale standing behind me.</p><p>“Where’s Amberley?!” I charged.</p><p>“Tucked in for the night on the settee in the bookshop.”</p><p>“Asleep?!”</p><p>Aziraphale looked a bit shifty and did that thing with his hands, a sort of a half-wring. “While we were playing chess and chatting, he succumbed to drink.”</p><p>That wasn’t the whole story. “Was there something <em>in</em> his drink, angel?”</p><p>“Perhaps.”</p><p>“You slipped him a mickey finn?!”</p><p>Aziraphale ignored me and sniffed. “Gas.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Amberley trapped her in here.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“’Infinite riches in a little room.’”</p><p>“Something like that.”</p><p>“Not just her. Both of them.” He looked over my shoulder. “<em>We</em> were murdered. One of them wrote that on the wall with their last strength.”</p><p>“Yeah, it’s indelible pencil, so Amberley decided to paint over it.”</p><p>“So, he found out about the relationship between Ernst and his wife and killed them.” Aziraphale passed by me and crouched down before the words. He traced them one by one with an index finger. “Strange,” said he, frowning.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Try it.”</p><p>I squatted beside him and mimicked his act. “Ah, that is interesting. There’s nothing but fear until the second E.”</p><p>“And the rest is evil. Two different writers.”</p><p>“Not Amberley. He’d hardly finish their plea for them, would he? Unless he went mad.”</p><p>“He didn’t have time to go mad. He had to dispose of the bodies.”</p><p>“That’s a practical thought, angel. If you’d just gassed your wife and her lover, where would you hide the bodies?”</p><p>“I’d bury them in the garden.”</p><p>“You’ve thought about this.”</p><p>“I read detective novels. They think about it. Often.”</p><p>“You wouldn’t dump them in the cellar?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>I looked at him. “You know, for an angel…”</p><p>“…I’m a bit of a bastard, yes, but in my defense, I have been playing chess with Josiah Amberley for more than three hours. It’s given me some insight. He’s not a nice man.”</p><p>“No, he’s not.” I waved a hand, and the message on the wall disappeared once more under a layer of paint. “Come on. Let’s see if we can find a grave larger than a dog’s.”</p><p>“I think Amberley did a trial run of his method,” Aziraphale wrinkled his nose, “on the dog.”</p><p>“Yeah. Evil.”</p>
<hr/><p>“What they don’t tell you in detective novels is that it takes a human a long time to dig a hole large enough for two adult corpses and then fill it in. And it’s a lot of hard work. I still maintain that dumping them in the cellar would be easier.”</p><p>“Crowley, those pipes over there, what are they?”</p><p>“Uh, those aren’t gas. Water.”</p><p>“They are much newer than the house.”</p><p>“So?”</p><p>He eyed me shrewdly.</p><p>“Ding dong bell.”</p><p>“Oh, angel, I could kiss you.”</p><p>“Could you?”</p><p>“Yeah, but let’s find the well first.”</p>
<hr/><p>“Crowley, what’s that over there?”</p><p>“Looks like an old dog kennel. You stay here, angel. I don’t want you snagging that pretty coat on brambles and thorns, and this place is full of them.”</p><p>“Crowley.”</p><p>“I’ll be all right. Please, Aziraphale, stay.”</p><p>“Okay. Don’t be long.”</p>
<hr/><p>The stone lid scraped heavily against the rim of the well as I pushed it aside, and the notion of opening a crypt sprang to mind. The notion was reinforced a moment later when the stench struck me square between the eyes.</p><p>I held a breath I didn’t need and stuck my head down into the well and peeled my eyes like deep sea diver.</p><p>I stared a long time.</p><p>Then I leant down even further and took things from a pocket and put them into another pocket.</p><p>Then I stared some more.</p><p>“Crowley!”</p><p>With effort, I straightened myself and snapped my fingers. The well covering and the old kennel returned to their original positions without any signs they’d been moved.</p><p>I stumbled back to Aziraphale. Something in my expression made him open his arms.</p><p>I fell into his embrace.</p><p>It was every bit as good as I imagined.</p><p>Strong, soft. Haven. He was haven in the midst of The Haven, which was anything but.</p><p>I made a weak noise. He tightened his grip.</p><p>We stayed like that for a while, but not too long</p><p>Eventually, Aziraphale asked,</p><p>“Is she in there?”</p><p>“Yes, they’re both in there. Doctor Raymond Ernst and Mrs. Amberley.”  </p><p> “What do we do now?”</p><p>The question brought me back to myself.</p><p>“You go to Barker. Now. Have it all come to him in a dream.”</p><p>“A dream?”</p><p>“Like Joseph. In the Bible.”</p><p>I felt Aziraphale’s tremour.</p><p>“Oh, I know it’s not the time or place, but I do get a just the tiniest thrill when you quote Scripture for you own purposes, Crowley. Don’t tell anyone.”</p><p>I snickered. “My lips are sealed, angel.”</p><p>“But a dream, Crowley. Are you sure?”</p><p>“Well, if you can think of a cleverer way, do that. Maybe Barker will accept it straight from your horse’s mouth. He might like you as much as you like him. I don’t care how you do it but make him understand the urgency of it. Get him to find the gas chamber and the bodies in the well in the morning. The earlier, the better.”</p><p>“Why Barker?”</p><p>“If he’s here just as Amberley is returning from a night on your settee, he’ll know how to set a trap and get Amberley to incriminate himself, maybe even confess to the whole thing. This situation needs an independent operative.”</p><p>“But <em>you</em> are an independent operative!”</p><p>“Well, it needs an honest one! Honest dicks know honest cops. We need the right ones to be on the scene, for the scene to go down the way we want.”</p><p>I wrenched myself out of Aziraphale’s arms and walked a few paces and ran a hand through my hair.  The Colt hung heavy under my arm.</p><p>“Josiah Amberley did buy tickets for a performance that Friday, but I checked the Haymarket Theatre earlier today, and neither his nor his wife’s seat was occupied at any time that night. He lied about that, and now we know what he was doing at the time.” I took the two tickets out of my wallet and handed them to Aziraphale. “Give those to Barker. There goes Amberley’s alibi.”</p><p>Aziraphale took the tickets and looked at them. “Did you find these inside the house?”</p><p>“Yes,” I lied.</p><p>“And how do I explain to Mister Barker how I came by them?”</p><p>“Oh, I don’t know. You don’t have to give him the tickets. You could just give him the information. You could say Amberley just happened to mention the seat his wife didn’t use over drinks and chess tonight. His seat would be the one beside hers, and the seats are in the upper circle. Amberley is the kind who would be sore about the waste of money. Or you could say that I found the tickets and that you don’t like me very much and you’d like a proper investigator to have them.”</p><p>“Why would I say that about you?”</p><p>I heaved a long sigh. “Because I lie to you and use you and take you for granted and you deserve better, much better, in the way of the company you keep.”</p><p>A cloud swept over Aziraphale’s shining countenance, and he said quietly, “You’ve got an answer for everything, haven’t you, shamus?”</p><p>“No, not everything. Not even most things. And I have many unanswered questions about this affair. I know Amberley didn’t go to the theatre last Friday night. I know he lured Ernst and Mrs. Amberley into that room,” I pointed back at the house, “and killed them and dumped them in the well. He hid his money somewhere. That’s all right. My real question is what happened to the chess set. I didn’t see it in the well.”</p><p>“He wouldn’t have thrown it down there, no matter how mad he went. You didn’t find it inside?”</p><p>I shook my head.  </p><p>“Amberley might be lying about the stolen money, but I don’t think he is lying about the chess set being stolen, Crowley. His distress about it seems the one genuine emotion he has.”</p><p>“I agree.”</p><p>Aziraphale looked thoughtful. “Crowley, was Mrs. Amberley being blackmailed by Ernst? And if she wasn’t, why did she say she was?”</p><p>“Those are two very good questions, angel.”</p><p> I didn’t say any more. After a moment, Aziraphale got the hint.</p><p>“So,” he straightened his jacket and smoothed his lapels in a ‘get down to business’ fashion, “I am going to give the whole case to Barker and send Amberley back here to confront the music in the morning. What are you going to do?”</p><p>“Brood.”</p><p>“Oh, lovely.”</p>
<hr/><p>I sat in my office, with my feet up on the desk. I wasn’t really drinking the rye, I was just keeping it company, one draught at a time, in my belly. The bug was keeping me company. We’d entered into that preempted staring contest of our first meeting, and I thought I might be winning.</p><p>The night was hot and quiet.</p><p>As I stared, I thought about the woman who’d been sitting in that chair two weeks earlier. I saw her face and her hands and the rest of her, with and without her outer garments.</p><p>I saw her move. I heard her voice.</p><p>I wondered. I drank.</p><p>At one point the stick-green Friar of the Folded Hands got upon his high horse and said,</p><p>“Crowley, thou hast committed—"</p><p>“Fornication,” I replied as I refilled my glass, “but that was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead.”</p><p>The wench is dead.</p><p>I thought about black lace and black knights. I thought about pawns. I thought about naughty letters and chess and other games that got played. I thought about needing a piece of glass between your eye and the world in order to view the latter properly. I thought about Mrs. Amberley.</p><p>And then I blinked.</p><p>“You win, padre. Congrats.”  </p><p>I gripped the arms of the chair tightly and, with a gurgle of gravely pique, hauled myself to standing. I put on my dark glasses in a doped fashion and sashayed out of the door in a drunk fashion, leaving a praying mantis, an empty bottle, a dirty glass, and a cold Colt behind.</p>
<hr/><p>The next afternoon, Aziraphale picked up the phone on the first ring.</p><p>“Angel.”</p><p>“Crowley, where are you?”</p><p>“Oh, you know.” I was in a phone booth near Florian’s. “How’d it go?”</p><p>“Just as you hoped. Barker and an Inspector MacKinnon and a couple of constables were at The Haven when Amberley returned mid-morning. I was there, too. Amberley went mad at the sight of the two bodies laid out on the lawn covered in sheets. The constables seemed to enjoy restraining him.”</p><p>“They would. But MacKinnon’s all right. What else? Did Amberley give it all away?”</p><p>“Yes, he howled about his faithless wife and his faithless friend and people getting what they deserved, but he was howling about his chess set and his money as they were removing him from the premises. I’ve just taken a call from Barker. He told him to call if there were any development. He said the police found the message on the wall as well as a piece of indelible pencil on Ernst. Ernst also had a pair of surprisingly intact receipts for the left luggage office at Paddington Station. Do you know what was checked?”</p><p>“Suitcases?”</p><p>“Yes, his and hers. Ernst’s and,” his voice faltered, “Mrs. Amberley’s.”</p><p>“Right.”</p><p>“Crowley.”</p><p>I knew what was coming. I gripped the phone receiver so hard it almost snapped it in two. “Yeah?”</p><p>“I seemed to be the only one who thought the body they pulled out of the well wasn’t Mrs. Amberley.”</p><p>The something hard and venomous coiled in the hole where my heart would’ve been.</p><p>“I know, angel.”</p><p>“I see.”</p><p>“Crowley, come home.”</p><p>Suddenly, Aziraphale’s voice sounded wrong. Very wrong.</p><p>“What’s wrong, angel?”</p><p>“I would very much like you to come back to your office. I would like to talk to you.”</p><p>He spoke stiffly like he was reading something. Or like someone was forcing him to read something. The vision of a gun pressed to the temple of his beautiful head sprung up, and the snake uncoiled, bright, hooded, and hissing.</p><p>“I’m on my way!” I cried and slammed the receiver down.</p>
<hr/><p>I burst into my office and looked about. There was only Aziraphale, tucking the cover onto the typewriter.</p><p>“Angel, are you okay?”</p><p>“Yes, yes, I’m sorry I worried you. Very silly of me. There’s a letter for you.”</p><p>There was a knock on the doorframe behind me and a low voice.</p><p>“Delivery for Mister Anthony J. Crowley.”</p><p>I got a small sick feeling in my nonexistent guts. I took the envelope from Aziraphale without looking at it and shoved it into my inside jacket pocket. I whipped round to see a delivery man with a parcel in his hand.</p><p>“Here? Not my flat in Mayfair?” I asked pointedly.</p><p>The delivery man looked at the parcel and then at the door. “This is the address on the front, sir. You are Mister Anthony J. Crowley?”</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but don’t write a song about it.” I strode to the door and took the parcel from him. It was wrapped in brown paper and about the size of a large shoe box. I was heavier than I was expecting. I frowned at the address, which was written in that feminine, flowery hand which was, by then, far, far too familiar.</p><p>I made to turn back and heard a cough.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“It’s Pay on Delivery,” said the delivery man apologetically.</p><p>“Oh.” I looked at Aziraphale’s distraught face. “Pay ‘im, angel.”</p><p>I moved slowly, or maybe I only thought I moved slowly, to the desk. I found the flick knife and went to work on the paper and string while Aziraphale buzzed about between the petty cash box and the door.</p><p>Once the parcel was unwrapped, I stared at the wood box. It was a hinged case. I lifted it and read the small engraved plaque on the side.</p><p>
  <em>Staunton, 1849.</em>
</p><p>I shook it. It rattled like all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.</p><p>Then I saw the note.</p><p>
  <strong>Denoument. Victoria. Platform 6.</strong>
</p><p> I spun round and slammed into Aziraphale in my haste to get out the door.</p><p>“Crowley, what is going on? That’s Amberley’s chess set!”</p><p>“I’ve got to go, angel.”</p><p>“Wait, Crowley!”</p><p>I didn’t wait.</p>
<hr/><p>The platform was busy and crowded, but that didn’t prevent me from spotting her.</p><p>Really, she was hard to miss, and I wasn’t the only one staring.</p><p>She was blonde, the kind of blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. She was dressed in mostly clinging black, with touches of gold, a belt and a very loose knit jumper which concealed nothing and offered no warmth except to the person looking at it. Her clothes might have been widow’s weeds if widows danced the Dance of the Seven Veils on the platform at Victoria Station. She was even taller than I remembered. I looked down and saw she was balanced on black skyscrapers pretending to be shoes.</p><p>I snapped my fingers as I approached her, ensuring that the streams of humans which eddied and flowed about would neither notice nor remember us.</p><p>“Hello, Mister Crowley,” she said in a voice which sounded like after-dinner port. She removed her large dark glasses. Those big round eyes, those long dark lashes, I remembered them. Her lips, which were painted blood-red, curled in a smile.</p><p>Really, she ought to have been in pictures. Or carved in stone. She was a living, breathing siren.</p><p>“Just Crowley, thanks. What do I call you? It can’t be Susan.”</p><p>“Millie.”</p><p>“Millie?!”</p><p>She laughed. “Milagros Duarte.” The words made the sound of the River Plate slapping against the hull of a ship bound for anywhere but B. A.</p><p>“Incan rose, also called rhodochrosite, is mined in Argentina.”</p><p>She nodded. “Among other places. You’re clever, Crowley, much cleverer than I thought when I first walked into your office. But tell me just how clever you are. We’re almost at the end of the story. Tell me how it started. Begin at the beginning.”</p><p>“Working in The Haven, you knew Mrs. Amberley and Raymond Ernst were having an affair. You knew that Mister Amberley had found out about it. You knew he was planning to kill his wife and her lover, and you knew how. When he tried it out on the dog, you knew he was close to snapping, and you came to me.”</p><p>“Good, good. Go on.”</p><p>“I’m not clever enough to know why you came to me.”</p><p>“Let’s just say because I thought anyone who was willing to help Mrs. Cecil Forrester would serve my purposes nicely.”</p><p>“I’m flattered.”</p><p>“You shouldn’t be. Not at that point in the story, at least.”</p><p>“You planted the letters and the chess piece in Ernst’s rooms. How?”</p><p>“The old-fashioned way.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Yes, and he got terribly cut up about it. Cheating on the wife with the maid.” She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Boring.” Then her smile returned. “But you passed the test and found them. See?  Clever.”</p><p>I thought I smelled a whiff of summer storm but dismissed it  at once as a figment of my perfumed imagination.</p><p>“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Millie. When you came to see me, you wore Mrs. Amberley’s clothes.”</p><p>“Cora leant them to me. I told her I was going to see a young man in the city and wanted to impress him. It tickled her to dress silly ol’ Susan up in her fine threads.”</p><p>“Everything was hers but that.” I nodded at the snakeskin bag dangling from her wrist. I reached out a trailed a single finger down an edge. “That’s Patagonia pit viper.”</p><p>Her eyebrows rose. “Yes. You continue to impress, Crowley.”</p><p>“I know snakes. But enough about me. You imitated Mrs. Amberley’s handwriting in my office.”</p><p>“Yes, I’m very good at that sort of thing, and once in a while, Cora asked me to do it, chemist shop’s, places like that.”</p><p>“You knew about the affair. Did you also know that she and Ernst were planning to run away?”</p><p>“Of course. You might say after the dog the candle was burning at both ends and quick. When Cora learned that Josiah had bought theatre tickets, she thought it would be the perfect night to do it. She was planning to feign a headache and slip away and meet Ray once Josiah had left for the show, but Josiah beat her to it. He said he wasn’t feeling well and asked Ernst to come by and pick her up and take her to the theatre. As far as Ray and Cora were concerned, that was an even better plan. They were giddy with anticipation. So was Josiah, in a way.”</p><p>“And you were standing by, just watching, like a bug on a desk.”</p><p>“Call it what you like. Cora told me to give notice. She paid me well for it. She said Josiah would be dreadful to work for after she left him. He was always so mean about things. So I did as she asked. I gave notice. I left. But I came back later that evening and hid in the garden. After dark, I saw Josiah burying a little box in the dog’s grave. Then I saw him carry the bodies, one by one, to the well. As he was returning to the house, after depositing the second one, I snuck up behind him and—”</p><p>She opened her bag and tilted it so I could see the sap inside.</p><p>“He never knew what hit ‘im. You stepped on his glasses, too,” I said. “To buy yourself time, just in case.”</p><p>She nodded.</p><p>“You dug up the money in the dog’s grave.”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>“And got rid of all the photos of Mrs. Amberley. Macabre touch, finishing the writing on the wall, by the way. I suppose that’s where you found the theatre tickets, in the strong-room.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Why did you take the chess set?”</p><p>She shrugged. “Josiah Amberley should be parted from his precious chess set for the rest of his life, don’t you think? Of course, you do, or you wouldn’t have solved the case and got him arrested.”</p><p>“I had some help. How did you end up with the left luggage receipts?”</p><p>“Who do you think checked the bags in the first place? They used silly ol’ Susan as their accomplice. They were ready to go at the first opportunity, which turned out to be the last.” </p><p>“And, when it’s all said and done, silly ol’ Susan is up four thousand pounds.”</p><p>“But down a valuable chess set!” She winked at me, then confessed. “I don’t play chess.”</p><p>“Did you know Josiah Amberley would hire me to find his chess set?”</p><p>“I thought it highly probable. He didn’t know what had happened to it, and he wanted it back badly, maybe even more than his money. Where do you suppose I’ve been hiding since Friday night?”</p><p>I pretended to think, then said, “Mrs. Cecil Forrester has a lot to answer for!”</p><p>“She got her cut.”</p><p>“No doubt.”</p><p>“Oh, by the way, here. I don’t need them anymore.” She pressed something into my hands, a pair of glasses. The lenses were thick, but when I held them up and looked through them, there was no distortion. Just costume, then.</p><p>I observed with some detachment that there were a lot of glasses in this case, thick ones, thin ones, dangling from chains and held together by glue. Some false, some true. The ones in my hand and the ones Aziraphale had got from Doctor Ernst fell into the first category.</p><p>I looked at the glasses, then put them in my pocket. “You know, in detective stories, they sometimes call these ‘cheaters.’ Seems appropriate. Did Mrs. Amberley actually use that pince-nez that you wore to my office?”</p><p>“Yes, but she had many pairs, fine ones and cheap ones. That’s how she and Ray met and the excuse they used to continue to meet.”</p><p>Millie and I looked at each other for a long moment, and then finally I had to say it.</p><p>“You knew he was going to kill them, and you let them die, Millie.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>I gave a minute nod.</p><p>“Crowley, I bought two tickets for Dover. Just in case.”</p><p>One corner of my mouth rose, but I shook my head. “No, but I am terribly flattered.”</p><p>I took her gloved hands in mine and held her gaze. </p><p>“Millie, if you’re ever in trouble, trouble you can’t get out of by yourself, that is, and you need someone, I’ll be there, I promise.”</p><p>She chuckled mirthlessly. I envied her that.</p><p>“You’re offering to be my guardian angel?”</p><p>I released her hands and drew my dark glasses down to the tip of my nose, dipped my chin, and looked directly at her.</p><p>“I’m no angel, Millie.”</p><p>Mine was a gaze that had, through the years, spurred cruel armies, emboldened torturous regimes, and encouraged depraved fiends. It had felled tens of thousands, driven many hundreds to madness, and outright murdered a few weak-hearted.</p><p>But Milagros Duarte didn’t even flinch.</p><p>She parried my blow with three little words.</p><p>Looking over my shoulder, she said,</p><p>“Good-bye, Mister Fell.”</p><p>I spun round.</p><p>Aziraphale snapped his raised fingers and said stonily,</p><p>“Denouement’s over.”</p><p>A second later, when I turned back round, Millie was gone, and the crowd had already filled her void.</p>
<hr/><p>Aziraphale and I walked all the way back to the shop in silence. The sky was filling with greyish clouds, but the air was still and thick as cake. It looked as if it was going to rain, but it didn’t feel as if it were going to rain.</p><p>Just bluff, then.</p><p>Aziraphale paused on the stairs.</p><p>“I put Amberley’s chess set in the shop for safekeeping. Do you want me to get it?”</p><p>“No, leave it where it’s at. You know, I don’t even know how to play.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>We climbed the stairs and passed through the antechamber into my office.</p><p>I crumpled into the swivel chair and put my hand on the knob of the bottom drawer, ready to wrench it open.</p><p>“Ah, damn,” I muttered. I’d forgotten I’d finished the rye the night before.</p><p>“Open it,” said Aziraphale.</p><p>I shot him an incredulous look but, remembering what he could do with water and wine, I did as I was told.</p><p>To my astonishment, there was a bottle of Old Forester in the drawer.</p><p>“Devil’s whiskers! Where did this come from?”</p><p>I sat the bottle on the desk. I removed my dark glasses and dropped them in the drawer.</p><p>“I traded the 1840 Rajasthan chess set for a few bottles.” Aziraphale smiled smugly. I couldn’t see them, but I suspected his fingers were drumming on his thighs. But then he wrung his hands a bit.</p><p>“Oh, yeah? That all?”</p><p>“Well, I also got an 1890 pre-editorial version of <em>The Picture of Dorian Grey</em>.”</p><p>I lifted the bottle. “Care to join me?”</p><p>“Don’t mind if I do.”</p><p>That caused my eyebrows to attempt the high jump. I don’t think I’d ever known Aziraphale to drink bourbon, not even if it were sugared and frothed and dyed the colour of a little girl’s tea party.</p><p>When I reached in the drawer, I pulled out two clean glasses and poured two fingers in each.</p><p>“Here’s to crime,” said Aziraphale as he raised his glass.</p><p>That got me. I wheezed.</p><p>“Right back at you, angel.”</p><p> Our glasses clinked.</p><p>“Man, this stuff dies painless in me,” I gasped as the spirit, as hot as volcano spit, flowed down the gullet I didn’t have.</p><p>Aziraphale took a tiny sip and twisted his face in tragic disgust.  </p><p>“How ‘bout a Horse’s Neck?” I suggested, hoping to put him out of his misery.</p><p>“Can’t be any worse,” he said between discreet coughs.</p><p>With the snap of my fingers, there was a Collins glass in front of Aziraphale. A lemon peel wound like a yellow python through the mixture of bourbon, bitters, ginger ale—lots of ginger ale—and ice.</p><p>He sipped. He relaxed.</p><p>“Much better. Thank you.” </p><p>We drank, and from stage, right, the bug joined us, cresting the side of the desk as noiselessly as twilight. He assumed a devotional pose next to the open bottle like it was spire of Our Lady of Prompt Sucker.</p><p>The three of us were a quiet triptych until Aziraphale said,</p><p>“When did you know about Millie?”</p><p>“I didn’t know everything until just now. But when I returned from my first visit to The Haven with Josiah Ambereley, I went Downstairs and checked the Registry.”</p><p>Aziraphale nodded. He had a Home Office, too, which kept such records.  </p><p>“Raymond Ernst and Cora Amberley were listed. So, I knew they were dead as well as missing. Then, I got the theatre tickets and the claim tickets anonymously in the post the yesterday morning. The address on the envelope was written a hand that looked like Mrs. Amberley’s. That was suggestive, but not conclusive. When I put my head in the well, I knew the gal who’d showed up in my office claiming to be Mrs. Amberley wasn’t the real Mrs. Amberley. Ernst and the real Mrs. Amberley were wearing Chicago overcoats—"</p><p>“Crowley.”</p><p>“I mean, they were dead in that well, and I doubted Josiah Amberley, as foolish as he was, would murder the wrong woman. Or only the wrong woman, I suppose. So, who was the woman claiming to be Mrs. Amberley? Who was sending me clues? Susan the maid was the first guess, and it turned out to be the correct one.”</p><p>After a long, sipping silence, Aziraphale remarked, “You could always join her whenever and wherever she settles.”</p><p>I wasn’t certain I heard right. I looked at the bug. He might’ve nodded his triangle head.</p><p>“I could, but I don’t want to,” I said slowly.</p><p>“Why not? You like her. A lot. Don’t try to deny it, Crowley. You like her very much.”</p><p>Maybe it was the dying afternoon light. Maybe it was unrelenting heat. Maybe it was just the weight of six thousand years, but I looked across the desk and saw Aziraphale, as if for the first time, no, not as if for the first time, I saw him as if he were human, even though he wasn’t.</p><p>I crafted my reply very carefully.</p><p>“Aziraphale, do you ever happen upon a really good human? Maybe in the street. Or some place of worship. Wherever. And if you do, do you ever decide to follow that human an extra two or three streets out of your way, just to watch them, just to see, out of professional curiosity, how they’re going do good? And when you see them help old ladies across the street and rescue blind kittens and fill poor boxes with their last two coppers, do you fill with pride and satisfaction and say to yourself, ‘Yes, sir, that’s one of mine!’”</p><p>“I suppose so.”</p><p>“Well, that’s what I feel when I see Millie Duarte! I see a human who will cause misery, pain, and suffering wherever she goes. It’s her nature. She won’t change. She won’t stop. And she does mayhem and murder better than I could ever dream of. She’s a diabolical nightmare! And I want her to keep going. I want to help her be the worst she can be for the rest of her days!” </p><p>Aziraphale was studying me as intently as I was studying him. Finally, he asked,</p><p>“And this avuncular feeling extends to her undergarments?”</p><p>Now I saw him. I really saw him. And the look on his face said he knew it. And the look on the bug’s face said he knew it and it was about damn time.  </p><p>“I noticed her stockings, angel. So, did you. I asked her, the following day, at a moment when I thought she’d be amenable to responding truthfully where she’d got them. I have an eye for such frippery, you know that. You’ve known that since France. First of all, professionally speaking, the good stuff goes a long way to further certain agendas. So, yeah, I asked her about her knickers. And I got my answer. She got ‘em at a shop in Paris called—"</p><p>“I know what the shop is called. I asked her, too.”</p><p>There was only about one thing that could’ve distracted me at that point, and, because the world was, indeed, as dreadful, dreadful as Mister Amberley had claimed, it happened.</p><p>A tiny rumble of thunder susurrated in the distance.</p><p>I jumped up out of my chair and flew to the window and threw it open and stuck my head out.</p><p>The sky hadn’t changed from our walk from Victoria.   </p><p>“HAIRY MANGLED DROUGHT-SHRIVELED BOLLOCKS!” I yelled. Then I pulled my head inside. “It’s not going to rain! It’s just teasing!” I banged my fists against the top of the window frame.</p><p>“It’s not teasing,” said Aziraphale quietly.</p><p>“It is! It’s going to rain in somewhere else, like bloody stinking Lewisham. Not here! It’s going to rain on Mrs. Cecil Bloody Forrester!”</p><p>“It’s not teasing. It’s just one of those things that takes a long, long, long time to arrive.”</p><p>“If it doesn’t rain, angel...”</p><p>“It. Will. Rain.”</p><p>I went back to my chair and sat. A fly buzzed in through the open window. Perhaps en route to Aziraphale’s sweet-smelling elixir, it coasted too close to the desk and—</p><p>SNAP!</p><p>The mantis caught it in folded arms.</p><p>“Dinner’s served, padre,” I said. “Now scram and take your vittles with you.”</p><p>The bug turned out to be amenable to suggestion.</p><p>When he’d disappeared off the desk, I reached in my jacket and pulled out silly ol’ Susan’s glasses. I sent them sliding across the desk. “Give those to the deserving poor.”</p><p>Aziraphale snorted. “You mean you don’t want to keep them as a souvenir? A memento?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>He looked at me, and whatever he saw in my face convinced him. He put the glasses in his pocket.  “Very well.”</p><p>I reached in my jacket a second time and plucked out the envelope and set it flat on the desk.</p><p>“So,” I said. “This.”</p><p>This time, there was no flowery, feminine hand and no Lewisham postmark. There was no postmark at all. And no address. Just a single word, typed, and I’d be a piss-poor gumshoe, indeed, if I couldn’t recognise the letters produced by the machine which belonged to my own office. The streaky O was a dead giveaway.</p><p>CROWLEY</p><p>“How long have you known?” Aziraphale’s voice was a whisper. “Since the first one?”</p><p>“Hell, no. I didn’t know until the day before yesterday. And I’ve been a bit busy since then. The sub-postmistress at Lewisham doesn’t miss much. I think she even knew about the mole under my left nipple.”</p><p>“Do you have a mole under your left nipple?” Aziraphale raked his eyes up and down my torso playfully, and I fell in love with him just a teensy bit more.</p><p>“Wouldn’t you like to know? Word to the wise, angel, next time you set about sending anonymous naughty letters to me, don’t be quite so charming or memorable. A grown man buying half a pound of fizzy cola bottle sweets. Twice. In less than two weeks.” I shook my head.</p><p>“It’s the heat!” Aziraphale protested. “I fancy them when it’s hot.”</p><p>I smiled. He smiled.</p><p>I nodded at the envelope. “Well, I suppose it’s time to read my post, angel.”</p><p>Aziraphale’s expression transformed into one of barely suppressed anticipation, and his growing excitement mirrored, and stoked, my own.</p><p>A single drop of condensation crawled down the side of the Collins glass, and the eye of the lemon peel winked.</p><p>“I suppose it is, shamus.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Crowley is quoting Christopher Marlowe's <i>The Jew of Malta</i>: <i>Thou hast committed - / Fornication: but that was in another country, / And besides, the wench is dead.</i> [Marlowe like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. The connection seemed clearer in my head when I wrote it, but I did not want to imply that Crowley had sex with Mrs. Amberley.]</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The angel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Crowley and his angel.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Why settle for the desk or the wall when what I really want is to be in your bed?</em>
</p><p>Why, indeed?</p><p>I wrenched my eyes from the typed page and looked at Aziraphale, who was in the client’s chair on the other side of the desk, sitting as still as King Tut’s tomb before the plundering.</p><p>“Mind if I make myself comfortable, angel?”</p><p>“Not at all.”</p><p>I rolled the chair away from the desk and as close to the wall as it would go. It wasn’t very far, but it was far enough to give Aziraphale ample view of what I was about to get up to. </p><p>Now, regardless of what some Dukes of Hell might claim, it could be argued that living among humans for so long, Aziraphale had gone native a bit more than I had. For instance, he preferred to buy his clothes instead of miracling them into existence, and he got his manicures done in a proper place, by proper humans who knew how to properly trim a cuticle and whatever else they did.</p><p>So, for the sake of appearances, I tried, whenever possible, to keep the conjuring off-stage. There hadn’t been a jar of Vaseline in the bottom drawer when I reached in, but nevertheless, I pulled one out and set it on the desk and removed the lid.</p><p>“Oh,” was all Aziraphale said. Rendering the chatty angel speechless was a feat, and I allowed myself a small frisson of pride at the accomplishment.</p><p>The slightest hint of a cooling breeze might have wafted in from the open window, but then again it might have been my wishful thinking. I returned my attention to the letter, which was its own brand of wishful thinking and the very opposite of cooling.</p><p>
  <em>I want to be laid out on your black sheets in nothing but silk and lace and satin ribbon. I want to feel the weight of your body on mine. I want to feel your mouth everywhere, your tongue everywhere, your fingers everywhere.  </em>
</p><p>I gripped the note with one hand and began to rub the front of my trousers with the other. The image of Aziraphale in nothing but lingerie sprawled upon my black sheets—really, what other kind was a flash bastard demon supposed to have—stirred me. The bulge in my trousers grew, and soon I moved on from just cupping my cock to fondling it through dark fabric.   </p><p>
  <em>Hold me down and take me. Bury your heat inside me and feel me clench round you. Over and over. Make me scream your name. Fold me in half and fuck me. </em>
</p><p>At that, I set the letter on the desk and, without looking at Aziraphale, said,</p><p>“I’m going to wank, angel, while I read this. Do you want to watch?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Good enough for me.</p><p>I freed my erection, an act which won a flatteringly sharp intake of breath from the front row seat. I applied Vaseline to the fingers and palm of one hand. I read ‘fold me in half and fuck me’ for a second time and proceeded.</p><p>
  <em>Slide your cock inside me, stretch me, and fill me. Claw and bite at the silk and lace and ribbon until I am bare under you. Naked. Nude. Exposed. Vulnerable. Maul me. You won’t hurt me. I’ll be begging you on, egging you on, reveling in it. Then turn me over and take me from behind. Mount me and make me moan into the bedclothes. I’ll grip them until they tear. Let’s tear your bed to pieces. Together.</em>
</p><p>As I read each statement, I stroked my cock from base to head and back, slicking it, making the journey nice and smooth. By human standards, my cock was long and thick. It also had a sinister bend to the left. Of course, if Aziraphale had said he wanted it small and green and twisted into a pretzel, I’d have made it so, but the stertorous breathing, the stertorous breathing that wasn’t <em>my</em> stertorous breathing, and really neither of us required respiration, told me that my junk was just jake the way it was. </p><p>I read on. Each phrase of the letter was a lick of flame. Flicker by flicker, the flames grew and compounded until I was engulfed. Indeed, at one point, I had to pause and close my eyes and slow my hand to keep my lust under control. I was teetering dangerously on the edge of release when I reached the final section.</p><p>
  <em>Won’t you teach me how to please you? Show me what you like best. I am dying to know. I want to know where to put my lips, where to slide my wet mouth, where to caress and where to grab. How to suck you off. How to tongue you bold. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I am a whore, for you and you alone. And your greedy whore wants you. Desk, wall, bed. Everywhere, anywhere, I am yours, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>yours in black lace</em>
</p><p>“Ngk!”</p><p>“Oh!”</p><p>My hips bucked. Cloudy streaks decorated a small expanse of skin framed by parted shirttails as well as the lowest fastened button of my shirt and the white fabric which surrounded it. I could’ve swept the mess away with a wave of my hand, but I decided not to. Let the naughty angel get a good look what his filthy words had done to me.</p><p>I did, however, wipe my slicked hand on my shirt before carefully folding the letter and returning it to the envelope and tossing the envelope on the desk.</p><p>“That’s the stuff to give the troops, angel.”</p><p>“So I gather,” he said as if he had a frog as well as the rest of the pond in his throat.</p><p>Another soft rumble of thunder sounded somewhere. My thoughts flitted in the direction of the window, but I didn’t turn my head to look. It might yet rain, I told myself, but I had more pressing matters.</p><p>I exhaled and closed my eyes and let my head fall back. My cock was limp, but, once more, I wanted Aziraphale to get a good look before I tucked it away, which I did after a long sigh.</p><p>The bottom drawer soon held three naughty letters, a pair of dark glasses, a bottle of Old Forester, and a Colt .38. Aziraphale had finished his drink. I put our two dirty glasses in the second drawer and magicked them away, out of sight.</p><p>I left the Vaseline open on the desk, the import of which I don’t think was lost on my companion.</p><p>“C’mon, angel, you’ve been too quiet. Your lot say confession is good for something. Out with it. Why the naughty letters?”</p><p>He shrugged. “I saw you look at Mrs. Amberley’s, that is, Millie’s thigh and, I started remember Paris, oh, I don’t know, I sort of lost my head. I was a bit jealous of the way you looked at her.” A smile fluttered at his lips. “And then, in the car, you said that those sorts of letters are for when you wanted to but couldn’t. And I thought, well, maybe if I wrote it down something would happen. After the first, I thought I might get over it. But when I started to think of things, I thought of more things, and so I wrote another.  And when I saw that Mrs. Amberley, the real Mrs. Amberley was dead and that the woman claiming to be Mrs. Amberley was something else, well, I was jealous all over again.”</p><p>“Angel, I haven’t had eyes for anyone or anything but you in about six thousand years. The word of a demon doesn’t count for much, and it shouldn’t, but I hope you’ll believe me. You said I had all the answers. I’m hoping that I know the answer to this one:  why did you ask Millie where she got her unmentionables?”</p><p>“Because I wanted to order some for myself. Because I wanted to wear them next to my skin, under my clothes.”</p><p>I rose to my feet. I drew off my jacket and hung it on the back of my chair. I removed my tie and threw it in the seat of the chair and unbuttoned my collar and the top two buttons of my shirt.</p><p>I circled the desk.</p><p>Aziraphale stood.</p><p>Like a seasoned valet, I helped him out of his coat.</p><p>He liked that coat. He’d kept it in pristine condition for about half a century and would likely do so for another fifty years.</p><p>I hung his coat on the back of the client’s chair and brushed the shoulders carefully with my hands.  </p><p>The air was charged. ‘It’s going to rain’ was chiming in what passed for my brain, followed by ‘We’re going to fuck.’ Both events seemed at once near impossible and about thousands of years in the making.</p><p>Aziraphale was facing the desk. I was standing just behind him.    </p><p>“Any chance I can get you a little more unwrapped?” I whispered.</p><p>I was thinking mostly of the bowtie and tight collar and wanting better access to that kissable neck of his. That Aziraphale removed the first, unfastened the second, and threw in unbuttoned cuffs, too, proved that miracles happen every day and precisely when you least expect them.</p><p>“I think you wanted to order some naughty bits for yourself, angel. I think you wanted to wear them. In fact, I think you’re wearing them right now. And I think you want to show me. Right before I fuck,” I paused for the gasp, his, not mine, “you against this desk.”</p><p>He unbuttoned his trousers. He bent at the knees and pushed them down over his rump, as far as they would go. He widened his stance as far as the fabric allowed, which wasn’t far. He was damn near hobbled.</p><p>And so was I. In another way.</p><p>“Satan’s bollocks!”</p><p>“Not hardly,” he retorted sharply.</p><p>The sight was something to see. Black silk stockings topped by two inches of black lace were reaching up. Black satin ribbons were reaching down towards journey’s end, lover’s meeting, etcetera. A black lace belt arched like a buttressed cathedral, and black lace knickers were partially hidden, partially distended by rolls and swells of Aziraphale’s pale, heavy flesh.</p><p>My own cock was stiff in an instant. Refractory periods are for suckers.</p><p>“You’re gorgeous, angel,” I whispered as I ran my hands over his arse and squeezed. The lace was doing its damnedest to contain those cheeks, but his ethereal cup overfloweth, as they never, ever say. I sank my hands inside the lace and squeezed again.</p><p>He groaned. “Yes!”</p><p>I leaned down and kissed the slope of his neck. I drew my hands out of the lace and circled them round. He was sporting a magnificent cock which was proud and hard and straining against all the trappings. I cupped him, then slid my hands back again to his arse and squeezed. I paused to snap a ribbon of suspender against one of his legs. I repeated the whole circuit, back to front, thrice, watching. With each pass, I pushed my edge of my fingers farther and farther under the hem of the knickers.</p><p>He held his shirttails gathered in one hand high in front of him, so both he and I had a clearer view of the proceedings. He began to shift a little bit, following my touch, back when I squeezed his arse and forward when I cupped his cock.</p><p>Finally, I had two hands sunk in the front of his knickers and was just holding him in my hands. He threw his head back and leaned against me heavily and sighed like he was finally where he wanted to be.</p><p>“You’re a slumming angel,” I murmured, looking down at his body, catching the slit of his cockhead almost winking at me, between my two caressing thumbs. </p><p>He turned his head, fixed me with a glassy eye, and raised an eyebrow.</p><p>“So what?”</p><p>Two words. Sharp as pins.</p><p>So what?</p><p>In me, those two words, sharp as pins, pricked a soap bubble the size and strength of a steel-plated zeppelin, something that had been hovering between the two of us since the earth began.</p><p>“So what? So what?”</p><p>I sounded like a myna bird.</p><p>Aziraphale knew he was slumming and didn’t care. Well, then, why should I?</p><p>It was so simple, and I felt rather foolish for not realising it a long time ago, really, from the beginning.</p><p>I kissed him. He kissed me back.</p><p>“There will be kissing in this, won’t there?” I asked when I pulled away.</p><p>“Oh, yes. That is, if you…”</p><p>“I do. Days of kissing, weeks, years, however long you want, but first…”</p><p>I jerked my hands out of his knickers and fell to my knees and bit his arse through the lace and got a startled “Oh!”</p><p>“Good? More?”</p><p>“Yes! More!”</p><p>I bit the other cheek. I widened my mouth just a little bit more than a creature without a so-called dislocatable jaw is supposed to and bit again on both sides. Then I bent lower and licked the back of his thighs along the edge of the lace, burrowing my tongue beneath the lace and forking it and tickling him.</p><p>“Oh, yes, I was hoping you’d do that!”</p><p>I moved back as he bent forward to brace himself on the desk. The act raised his arse in beautifully, wantonly. And he knew it.</p><p>“Come and get me, big boy,” he purred, and I was on my feet with my cock out in a moment. </p><p>My fingers were inside his knickers, finding his cleft, seeking his hole.</p><p>“So I’ll just push this aside and dig in, will I?”</p><p>I paused when I touched something much harder than I was expecting.</p><p>“Angel?”</p><p>“I didn’t want to worry about preparation. I wanted to be stretched and ready for you. The old-fashioned way, well, sort of.” He dropped his head and looked behind him. “And I was right about the size. I put it in small a week ago and let it grow a bit every day, and now it’s a bit bigger than you, so you’ll just slide in and find it nice and roomy.” He bounced his arse to punctuate the thought, and I nearly spent right there. “Just slip it in and go to town, shamus.”</p><p>“Oh, fuck, angel!”</p><p>“You can take the plug out. Or would you rather I do it?”</p><p>“Wait.”</p><p>I reached for the Vaseline and slicked my cock good and proper, encouraged to make a bit of show of it by Aziraphale’s moans of ‘All for me?’ and his wiggling arse and frustrated attempts to widen his stance.</p><p>I found the metal ring once more and gently, very gently, removed the plug and set it on the desk.</p><p>I yanked the lace aside so hard that I heard at least one thread snap.</p><p>Aziraphale trembled.</p><p>“Oh, Crowley!”</p><p>I lined up my cockhead and pushed it in.</p><p>Nice and roomy, indeed.</p><p>And then it happened.</p><p>A flash of lightning.</p><p>It was that brief spark of light which told me dusk had already fallen. I hadn’t been paying attention.</p><p>I smiled and pushed slowly into Aziraphale and counted.</p><p>“One, Mississippi, two, Mississippi, three Mississippi…” An Americanism, but I like sibilants.</p><p>“Ooohhh!”</p><p>It was twelve seconds until the thunder rumbled and I was fully sheathed in Aziraphale’s arse, my skin touching his, his body clenching tightly round my sex.</p><p>“So, you’ve been walking around, dusting your books, with a big ol’ honking corn cob up your arse, dreaming it was my cock?”</p><p>“Yes! But this is so much better. It’s warm and real and alive and throbbing. And it’s attached to you! Oh, it’s perfect, Crowley.”</p><p>“I think so. And I think your minx of an outfit’s perfect, too.” I pushed the bunched fabric of his shirt up even higher and rubbed his lower back and dropped my hands to his hips. “Mine in black lace. I’m going to make you mine, angel. Black lace, bare, every which-a-way.”</p><p>“Oh, yes, Crowley.”</p><p>“Lots of ways to do it.”</p><p>“Let’s do them all! One at time. Or, perhaps, in combinations.”</p><p>I laughed and sent the vibrations from my corporation to his. He whimpered.</p><p>“You’re trapped between me and the desk,” I said, remembering the first letter. “My body ground into yours, my heat inside you. Are you ready for me to pound your sweet arse like the cockslut you are?”</p><p>“Oh, yes, move, Crowley, move. Fast and deep.”</p><p>I’d like to record, for posterity, what it was like, thrusting into Aziraphale that first time. I’d like to, but I can’t. I was caught up in the realisation of a six-thousand-year-old desire, and that does things to a demon. I can say he was tight and hot and welcoming. I can also say I gripped him so hard and pumped so hard that I would’ve left bruises on anything remotely mortal. Hell, I would’ve torn that sweet hole to shreds. But even though I call him ‘angel,’ Aziraphale is, technically, a Principality. And, well, his type just don’t bruise, at least not on the outside. And as for tearing? Forget about it.  </p><p>I came longer and harder than I needed to just because it was so bloody good, and I didn’t want it to end.</p><p>“Oh, you liked it a lot, didn’t you?” Aziraphale teased, wriggling against me.</p><p>“One of your many gifts, angel. Understatement,” I croaked.</p><p>My hand reached round and brushed his cock. It was hot as a poker and just as hard, even half-garroted by the black lace knickers.  </p><p>“I’ll take care of that right after I take care of this,” I said.  </p><p>I eased my cock gently out of Aziraphale’s hole—he made a very sexy little mewl of protest which I vowed there and then to hear again, no matter how long it took—then spirited the plug from the desk into my hand and shoved it in.</p><p>I set his knickers to rights as best I could and said, “There. I want to keep you like that until I say otherwise.”</p><p>“Oh, Crowley. That’s wonderful.”</p><p>As I tucked my limp cock into my trousers for the second time, Aziraphale pushed himself to standing. Then he bent his arms and reached behind him, searching for the plug, and rocking a bit, front to back, as if he were seeing how it felt.  He hummed in a way that suggested he liked it very much. Then he looked over his shoulder and licked his lips. “I think this is going to work out even better than I imagined.”</p><p>“That’s because two imaginations are better than one, angel.”</p><p>Aziraphale reached down and pulled his trousers up, just at the back. The front of him was far too distended to fit.        </p><p>"Aziraphale.”</p><p>That stopped him. I don’t often use his name.</p><p>He twisted round and lifted his arms, and our lips met.</p><p>The kiss was overdue, but it made up for time.</p><p>I brushed the side of his face with curled fingers. “I’m going to throw you against that wall.” I pointed with my eyes. “Don’t hurt yourself.”</p><p>He chuckled. “Silly demon. I’m a Principality.”</p><p>The timing was impeccable. I shoved at the stroke of lightning, and Aziraphale’s back hit the wall at the very crack of thunder.</p><p>I leapt. Not a very graceful leap, nobody ever heard of the wily gazelle of the Garden of Eden, but it put me on my knees on the floor with my mouth right in front of Aziraphale’s still-erect cock.</p><p>I curled his black lace knickers down—like a seasoned professional, Aziraphale didn’t have to be told you put them on the outside of the belt—and he held his shirt bunched the waist, but slightly to one side so that he could get a better look. He was twice hobbled now, by his trousers as well as the knickers, which I swore would snap at any moment.</p><p>He leant back against the wall.</p><p>After one long lick from base to head, my tongue forked at top.</p><p>“Oh, yes, Crowley.”</p><p>Then I swallowed him down and let the tongue do its work unseen.</p><p>The open window was to my left, Aziraphale’s right. My fellating of the angel’s ethereal cock was accompanied by a series of flashes and rumbles. The gaps between the two were narrowing.</p><p>The storm was coming, and soon so was Aziraphale.</p><p>His hands were resting lightly on my head, and a gentle scratch behind my ear was my only warning.</p><p>He came with my name on his lips, and I don’t know if he were chanting it or if the one utterance was just bouncing around, echoing in the cavern of what might be called my skull.</p><p>Nevertheless, I heard it, over and over, as I swallowed and licked his thigh.</p><p>As I stood, I pulled up his garments in a rather unhelpful fashion.</p><p>I pressed my body to his, tight, hard, and unyielding. I pressed my mouth to his, loose, soft, and pliant.</p><p>After a long while, I mumbled into his mouth, “You’re trapped, angel, between me and wall.”</p><p>“I know. Isn’t it wonderful?”</p><p>“We’re going to have to take a walk if you want to realise all three of your naughty letter fantasies.”</p><p>And just then, I heard a tiny splatter on the windowsill.</p><p>In an instant, I was at the window, leaning out, looking up, getting a raindrop squarely in the eye.</p><p>“Make that a run, angel.”</p><p>“It’s all right,” he said, gathering his jacket, “I’ve got an umbrella.”</p><p>“Huzzah!”</p><hr/><p>The sky split, and the rain fell in sheets as we hurried through the streets towards Mayfair. Aziraphale and haste are not frequent bedfellows, as a rule, but he was moving at a good clip by the time we reached my building.</p><p>He stood under the awning, but I couldn’t help it. I was, well, pleased with the turn of events that I stopped traffic and danced.</p><p>I tippity-tapped to one side, then the shuffled-off-to-Buffalo to the other. I turned my head towards the sky and extended my arms and spun round and drank in the water. I let it bathe me and soak me to the figurative bone.</p><p>Aziraphale laughed and clapped and tossed me his umbrella for a partner—he could not, no matter how joyous the occasion, allow his fine coat to suffer—which I used, swinging it around my wrist as I tapped. I opened it and swung it round in front of me.</p><p>Finally, I took a bow and joined Aziraphale, and we went upstairs.</p><hr/><p>We went immediately to the bedroom. With my first snap, I dried myself. With my second snap, I produced a wooden valet for Aziraphale to use for his clothing.</p><p>He began undressing at once, and his single-mindedness rekindled my lust. I raised the large windows on either side of the bed so that we could hear the storm, the wind, and the thunder but lowered an invisible curtain which would prevent any of the rain from actually entering. The room was dark with lust-gilded night and nothing else.</p><p>I undressed.</p><p>He was laid out on my bed, his arms and legs extended, moving as if he were making, well, a snow angel in the sheets.</p><p>“They feel good against my skin.”</p><p>I swelled with pride. This was important to Aziraphale. As far as outward appearances went, all I ever wanted to do was look cool (in black). Aziraphale truly cared how things felt.</p><p>“Well, you feel good against my skin, angel,” I said as I crawled onto the bed and slid my body atop his.</p><p>He wrapped his arms around me, and we sort of rolled back and forth, kissing and touching.    </p><p>“It rained,” I said.</p><p>“Told you so.”</p><p>“Smug angel. I like the sound of it. It’s going to cool things off, too.”</p><p>“I’m glad you like it because it’s going to rain for days.”</p><p>“Is it?”</p><p>“Crowley, don’t you ever listen to the wireless?”</p><p>“Not since it was commandeered by nothing but idiots talking about frying eggs on the pavement!”</p><p>“Well, I heard it’s going to be at least three days of rain.”</p><p>I stared at him and realised that he and I were in each other’s arms, mostly naked and naked, respectively, on a bed, talking about the weather. And we should’ve been talking about something else.</p><p>“I love you, angel.”</p><p>He blinked. “Oh, Crowley, I love you, too. I would’ve said it, but I didn’t want to…”</p><p>I knew Aziraphale loved me, but he was an angel, and he loved everybody. He did not, as far as I knew, get into everyone’s bed wearing Parisian black lace undergarments. And that was a point in my favour.</p><p>“I am not even certain I can love…”</p><p>“You can, Crowley, you do!”</p><p>Of course, he would say that. “It might not be in the contract, but whatever I can do that, however close I am constitutionally able to come to it, I do, to you.”  </p><p>“Oh, Crowley.”</p><p>He kissed me, and I let him. The rain fell.</p><p>After a while, I forked my tongue and started to tickle Aziraphale’s tongue. I pulled away and looked down at our bodies.</p><p>His cock was hard. My cock was hard. Only one of ours, however, was being strangled by black lace.</p><p>“I’m contemplating slashing the knickers off you, angel, once and for all. Do you mind if I ruin them?”</p><p>“No, as long as it’s a prelude to fucking me.”</p><p>I raised my head and opened my mouth, displaying a pair of viperous fangs, through which the fork tongue was extended and flickering.</p><p>“Three daysss of rain, angel.”</p><p>A full-bodied shudder coursed through Aziraphale’s body as if he’d been hit by a live wire.</p><p>“Oh, my!”</p><p>Now you might say that it’s impossible to divest someone of a delicate, clinging garment with two razor-sharp blades in less than a minute without leaving a scratch, but you probably don’t know a lot of demons.</p><p>“Good Lord!” exclaimed Aziraphale when I was done. Then he caught himself. “Oh, I’m sorry, Crowley.”</p><p>I shrugged and tucked my fangs and tongue away. “Bound to happen once in a while, just not, you know, at the climax, if you can help it.” I don’t have a lot of school pride, so to speak, but cheering for the away team when the home team is scoring is a bit off-putting.</p><p>“Of course, of course.”</p><p>I ran my hands all over Aziraphale’s cock and thighs and hips and perineum and arse. I admired the lace and the ribbon and silk.</p><p>“Your legs look gorgeous in black.”</p><p>“Oh, thank you. I like the belt, too, sort of frames the picture, so to speak.” Watching him trace the suspender belt with his own fingers made me even harder.</p><p>“If you kept it to belt and suspenders and stockings, you could just come upstairs when you’re bored and, quite conveniently, drop trou and bounce on my lap.”</p><p>He hummed. “That sounds lovely. Oh, do fuck me, Crowley.”</p><p>“Spread those legs, angel, and lift those hips.”</p><p>He obliged with a whimper.</p><p>I curled a finger through the ring of the plug.</p><p>“Now when I release this, whatever flows out is going to be just perfect for slathering my cock.”</p><p>“Ooo! Yes!”</p><p>He snapped his fingers just as I pulled the plug.</p><p>I scooped up the slick and went to work greasing my pole.</p><p>Aziraphale pushed up onto his elbows and watched.  </p><p>“I don’t think that will ever get old,” he said. “Not in a thousand years.”</p><p>I grinned. “Let’s test it.”</p><p>I hitched his legs over my shoulders, lined up my cock, and pushed in.</p><p>We groaned together.</p><p> “Such a whore,” I growled as I began to thrust, slow and steady as a freight train. “Loose and full of old spunk. Greedy, too. Naughty letters, naughty knickers.”</p><p>Aziraphale hummed. His head lolled to one side and his eyes were closed. He was smiling. His arms were spread out, and his lovely zaftig body was being pushed inch by inch, thrust by thrust, toward the head of the bed. Then he bent his elbows and put his hands behind his head. From the waist up, he might have been lying on a beach, sunning himself.</p><p>“Fuck me, Crowley, fuck me. Deeper, love. You know how I need it—oh!” His eyes fluttered open and were round.</p><p>I may have, a moment before, magically increased the length and girth of my cock by just enough to catch a harlot’s notice.</p><p>“Oh, yes, Crowley!” Aziraphale dropped his hands down to my arse and gripped. “Oh, oh, oh! OH!”</p><p>“Angel!”</p><p>Pleasure ripped through me and began to pump into the angel’s body in the form of hot jets.</p><p>“Oh, that’s what I need, Crowley. Oh, you’re so good to me. Don’t stop, love, don’t stop.”</p><p>Eventually, I collapsed against Aziraphale’s chest and mumbled,</p><p>“Kiss me, you beast.”</p><p>He put his sloppy lips to mine, and we imitated a pair of seals fighting over two ends of the same fish.</p><p>Finally, Aziraphale’s legs slipped from my shoulders and wound round my waist.</p><p>Pulling out made an obscene gushing noise, which was followed by that naughty mewl I liked so much.</p><p>I immediately fell upon Aziraphale’s cock and sucked him off to angelic whimpering, which, ask anyone who’s heard both, is much better than harp-strumming!</p><p>I flipped him over and took him again, just as he described in his third letter, with his face in the black bedclothes and my cock in his arse.</p><p>But I added something, just to keep things interesting. Since he wasn’t watching, I extended my tongue like an extremely flexible and forked-tipped tape measure and slipped it in with my cock.</p><p>Aziraphale moaned and bucked like a horse named Tabasco, and I had to use some genuine force to hold him still enough for me to wriggle my tongue round and find his ethereal prostate and milk it like an advertisement for the Land of Demon and Honey.</p><p>He was babbling when I finally came and pulled out.</p><p>“Crowley…love…so good…came again…on your sheets…beautiful cock…beautiful demon…oh...so good to me…”</p><p>I turned him over. There was a magnificent stain under him.</p><p>“Nap?”</p><p>“Hmm.” His eyes were still closed, and he was still smiling.</p><p>“Why don’t I slip these off?” I asked, caressing his legs through the black silk. “I want you completely naked in my bed.”</p><p>He was still murmuring assent to questions I hadn’t asked when I hung his stockings and suspender belt on top of his trousers on the wooden valet.</p><p>Being unforgivable ought to come with some perks, and one of them is no one ever has to sleep in the wet spot.  </p><p>With a snap, everything was clean, except Aziraphale. He grunted and took care of himself.</p><p>I tucked Aziraphale under the sheet and curled myself behind him. I’d forgotten about pillows, so I snapped a couple of those into existence, too.</p><p>“Big spoon,” Aziraphale sighed and reached a hand back.</p><p>I clasped his hand in mine and squeezed it.</p><p>“Sweet dreams, angel.”</p><hr/><p>It’s nice to wake up with your cock in a tight arse.</p><p>“Good morning, angel.”</p><p>“It’s technically early morning, I suppose. Is this all right, Crowley?” His voice was nervous.</p><p>“Yeah, more than all right,” I reassured him.</p><p>We were still side by side. I was still the big spoon, but I discovered my leg was thrown over Aziraphale’s hip, and he was rocking us back and forth to produce a gentle slide in and out. When I began to take over the thrusting, he groaned.</p><p>“Oh, yes. Good morning, good morning, good—oh yes—good morning.”</p><p>I let my lower half go about its business while my hands explored Aziraphale’s upper body, back, shoulders, neck, and sides. I slipped a hand round and teased his nipples and caressed his chest while I kissed the skin I could reach.</p><p>He was so soft and wonderfully pliant, and there was so much of him, and I adored every morsel, and I told him these things, and other things, until I spent.</p><p>“That’s what I want to do later to you, Crowley.”</p><p>In a nutshell, I let him, and we fucked ourselves into another nap.</p><hr/><p>When I woke a second time, it was definitely morning. The sky beyond the window was a pale grey, and the rain had slowed to a light drizzle.</p><p>Aziraphale was snoring!</p><p>I almost chuckled but fearing whatever noise would come out of me might wake him, I eased out of the bed and padded silently towards the kitchenette.</p><p>On my way, I turned my head and glanced in at the plant room and got a shock to my system.</p><p>Like many, I know ever hue and shade of my plants in every kind of light and shadow, and one quick look told me there was something there that wasn’t supposed to be there.</p><p>“Just what in the devil are you doing here?” I roared and approached in my most menacing stride.</p><p>Triangle head, bulging eyes, stick body, folded hands.</p><p>He hadn’t changed.</p><p>“Did you hitch a ride in Aziraphale’s pocket?”</p><p>The bug didn’t say. Still a wise choice.</p><p>“Still playing dumb, eh? All right, but you should know there aren’t any flies here.” I whipped my head round and back and cast a threatening eye about the flora and leafage. “At least, there better not be!”</p><p>I turned back to the bug, who looked nonplussed at this news. His type would. They get their begging bowl filled once in a millennium, and they’re jake.</p><p>“Very well,” I acquiesced. I was in a good mood, really, the best mood I’d been in in a long, long time, and I was feeling like Lady bloody Bountiful. “You can stay, but you’re going back to the bookshop with him whenever he returns.” I turned to leave but then amended, “And absolutely no missionary work! I’d rather deal with a hundred Satan cultists than one of them. Blech!”</p><p>And with that line drawn in the enriched potting soil, I stomped off, continuing on my journey to the kitchenette.</p><p>The fact that I could only make water and coffee in my home had never bothered me before, but it did then. Aziraphale liked food, real food, and I didn’t have any.</p><p>Breakfast. He liked breakfast.</p><p>Love does strange things, and the proof of that is for the first time in about six thousand years, I made a shopping list.</p><p>I was on my fourth item when there was a knock at the door. I snapped on some clothes and answered it. Peepholes are for suckers.</p><p>“Delivery for Anthony J. Crowley?”</p><p>I signed.</p><p>The deliveryman was about to leave when an idea struck.</p><p>“Want to wrap yourself up in some velvet, pal?”</p><p>He frowned and looked appropriately suspicious.</p><p>I handed him the list and a tempting, but not too tempting, amount of cash. “Get everything on that list and bring back within an hour and there’ll be double the amount in your pocket.”</p><p>He stared at the filthy lucre, then tipped his hat.</p><p>“Yes, sir!”  </p><p>I smiled and closed the door.</p><p>Minions were wonderful, and willing minions were ever better.</p><p>As I waltzed back to the bedroom, I gently shook the box in my hand. The package had a French postmark. It was larger than an antique chess set but it weighed a fraction of Mister Amberley’s pride and joy.</p><p>Black lace. Pink lace. Red lace. White lace.</p><p>With the ribbons and silk and other pretty bits to match.</p><p>I grinned.</p><p>Someone was going to wake up to a nice surprise.</p><hr/><p>“That’s not possible!”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because the knight can’t move like that.”</p><p>“I think the Black Knight should be able to move like that. He’s stealthy. He can snake, I mean, sneak up from behind.”</p><p>“That’s against the rules, Crowley.”</p><p>“Are they rules, angel, or suggestions?”</p><p>“I think the chess lesson is over for the evening.”</p><p>We were in the bookshop, facing each other over the Staunton set.</p><p>The praying bug was observing the proceedings with respectful silence.</p><p>“Want to come home with me, angel?”</p><p>Aziraphale smiled and pretended to consider. “Yes. I have something I want to show you.”</p><p>“Then you have something I want to be shown.”</p><p>“Just so.”</p><p>We walked to Mayfair, arm in arm.</p><p>It was Thursday.</p><p>But it was not as hot, and the streets were beginning to fill with city folk returning from the holiday frolicking.</p><p>It was almost September.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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